The shop is called Salt & Vinegar. The sides are still salt, and vinegar. Say whether you want them on the fish and chips at the counter, or whether you will do it at home. That sentence is the whole ritual. A bottle of vinegar to take away is £2.50 if you want it on the table later. Ketchup in a bottle is the same price. A small pot of sauce is £1.00.
The photograph is vinegar and a meal. It is not this shop’s wrapping, and it is not a branded bottle from number 85. Use it as a reminder of the finish, not as a product shot.
Peas, curry, pickles
Mushy peas are £2.00. That is the usual companion to a Coulsdon cod if you want the green pot. Curry sauce is £2.40, the other usual companion, and people do pick both. Gherkins, pickled onion or pickled egg are £1.00 each. None of those is hidden inside the fish price. Name them.
Chips start at £3.00. They are the base of the meal even when the fish is the headline. A chip butty is £3.50 if you want bread around them. Cheesy chips are £5.00. Onion rings, ten of them, are £3.50 on the vegetarian list. Gravy is mentioned on the homepage as a side people add; if you want gravy, ask, because a homepage sentence is not always a labelled price on the board that hour.
Drinks sit next to the sides in the bag: cans at £1.20, 1.25 litre bottles at £3.00, tea £2.00, coffee £2.50. They are not sides in the chippy sense, but they are the other line you forget to say until you are already paying.
Order the finish out loud
A large cod at £11.50 with chips, peas and curry is a different bag from a large cod eaten dry in the car. The fryer does not know which one you meant unless you say. Friday, when the queue is moving, is when that sentence gets missed. Phone 020 8660 6990 and include it in the list: large haddock, chips, mushy peas, salt and vinegar, a can of Diet Coke.
This page is not a nutrition label and not a claim that the peas come from a particular farm. It is the published extras at one Coulsdon counter, 85 Stoats Nest Rd, CR5 2JJ, Monday to Saturday. Sunday the vinegar bottles stay on the shelf because the door is locked.
For the fish those sides go with, read cod and the other fish. For a whole household’s list, read family orders.