A Salt and Battery on Greenwich Avenue in Manhattan NYC serve my favourite Fish and Chips in the USA. I first wrote about this place in 2011 when I was a expat living in Chicago hunting for foods from back home (read about that on one of my first blogs The Chicago El Stop Food Hunt Project) , back then I spent a lot of time looking for English food to remind me of home, nowadays I spend more time hunting down American and ethnic American foods as I travel within the States.

It was though in search of a little bit of comfort food from my home country that I made the trip down to Greenwich to get my hands on some Fish and Chips. I ordered up a basket of Haddock and Chips, (officially Large Haddock and Small Chips), with mushy peas and a can of Tizer to eat in.

Haddock and Chips

 

I had forgotten just how good their battered fish is here at A Salt and Battery, if I am honest it is better than a lot of Fish I have eaten back home. The flesh of the Haddock itself has such a solid meaty bite and almost a sweet taste. You can tell that it is fresh and not frozen as there is no wetness in the battered bite. The batter itself is crunchy and crispy and as I note it is not at all soggy.

The chips are pretty good too, they are a bit thin for my liking, but they are well fried and I like that they give you a load of the crispy crunchy bits as well. Just like a traditional British Fish and Chip shop they have plenty of salt and vinegar on the counters to liven up the content of the basket. The only downside is that I could not even manage to finish a small portion of chips, small still means huge here. I could never manage to eat a large portion 🙂

I had some Mushy peas to go alongside my Haddock and Chips and was happy to say that these were the real deal. I really enjoyed mixing them in with my chips and I liked that they are a little bit runny as well so that you can eat them almost like a thick pea soup. They are just like you get back home.

I washed it all down with a can of Tizer which was an added little treat. I forgave that it came from a multipack and that it was well overpriced compared to England 🙂

A Salt and Battery really is just like a Fish and Chip shop used to be like back home in Britain.  On their website they tell us that

“A Salt & Battery began as a desire to bring the best of Britain’s traditional fish and chip culture of fresh lightly-battered, deep-fried fish and thick cut chips with salt and malt vinegar to New York. Our goal has been to recreate that unique flavour using traditional British fryers and cooking techniques and, wherever possible, locally harvested, sustainable produce.”

I think that they most certainly have managed to meet that goal. Good stuff!

 

 A Salt and Battery is located at 112 Greenwich Avenue, New York, NY 10011

Check them out on their Facebook page and on their Twitter Feed to find out what they are upto

They sit on Greenwich Avenue alongside a couple of other expat havens including  Tea and Sympathy who are like a traditional English café serving up “such favourites as Afternoon Tea, Bangers ‘n Mash, Shepherd’s Pie, Welsh Rarebit, Roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding. Desserts include Treacle Pudding, Sticky Toffee Pudding and Rhubarb Crumble all served with custard; scones with clotted cream and jam and a selection of our home-made caked baked fresh on the premises daily” and a shop called Carry On Tea and Sympathy who sell lots of British goodies

It is like a little bit of home and a small expat enclave for those that just need a little bit of blighty on their doorstep in the City