An Upmarket Notting Hill Chippy Moves into a Changing Soho

A popular, upmarket fish and chip shop from Notting Hill looks to be in moving into central London. The Chipping Forecast whose original and only restaurant is on All Saints Road in Notting Hill has apparently taken over the Greek Street site in Soho previously occupied by the meatball shop, Balls and Company (which closed at the turn of the year.) Twitter user James Lewis identified the newly branded property this morning.

The Chipping Forecast — which prides itself on sustainably sourced fish from Cornish seas — started out as a market stall on Soho’s Berwick Street at the start of 2016. Later that year it opened its first permanent site in Notting Hill. As well as classic British battered fish and dripping-fried chips, the restaurant also serves modern seafood dishes like monkfish scampi and mussels steamed in beer; as well as Anglo-American comfort foods like crab mac-and-cheese and lobster rolls.

The restaurant — whose name is a riff on the age-old BBC Radio 4 programme “The Shipping Forecast” — guarantees that fish is served within 48 hours of being caught. Soho, whose changing landscape has been evidenced by recent closures, has proved prohibitively expensive for a number of existing and prospective operators.

But there’s always a market in the centre of the English capital for the country’s most well-known food custom, is there not? But The Chipping Forecast will not be alone: It will face competition from Poppie’s, Golden Union, Randall & Aubin, and nearby Bonnie Gull Seafood Shack for a share of Soho’s seafood market.

More soon.