Like most of London’s pie and mash shops, The Fryer’s Delight is one of those places that should be treasured for its cultural importance, against the secret wish that it were better than it actually is. To nip this in the bud: the fish and chips are alright. The batter on the fish always looks slightly like a fossilised rock, and if the chips weren’t fried in beef dripping they would be middling. Even the tallow is questionable: is that a particularly beefy tang or just old oil? The experience is what it’s all about here: the formica, the black and white tiles, the cod in bowler hat mascot, the fact that The Fryer’s Delight is not a chippy, but a caff that happens to serve fish and chips. It’s possible to get the works for about £7-8 sitting down, less if foregoing mushy peas, which would be a mistake: the mushy peas are an essential reminder that all brief joy can only be put into context next to the unremitting blandless of existence. Also, order the fried chicken. While the fish is merely decorative, the chicken is unexpectedly great — an unholy matrimony of beef and chicken fat, all puffed and crisped up like a confit. Order it and never go back to cod again.

Central, yet in the middle of nowhere, Fish Central is one of a select few London chippies in a tier just below actually going to the coast or moving North. Located on an estate just off Central Street, it’s run by Greek-Cypriots preserving British traditions, like most of the oldest fish and chip shops in the city. In Fish Central’s case it’s owned by George Hussein, who can still be found frying the fish or expertly tossing the chips in salt. Cod and haddock are usually fried fresh to order and steam gently inside their exoskeleton of batter, meaning they actually taste like fish. A restaurant is attached but one of London’s great pleasures, in sunshine or in the cold, is to take the package outside, unwrap it like a Christmas present, and greedily eat the steaming chips out on the Barbican concrete.

A good fish and chip shop has to understand what fish and chips is about. There is no point trying to gussy it up. If trawling the absolute best fish and willing to pay for it, why chuck it in a deep fat fryer? No one wants ikejime battered haddock. Fladda in Camberwell gets this, but isn’t shy to make improvements and alterations. Anonymous “chip shop” sausages and pert, scarlet saveloys sit alongside battered sausages from The Butchery; homemade steak and ale pies alongside Pukka; whole fish fillets alongside a £5 fish bites and chips deal celebrating fish off-cuts that Josh Niland could be proud off. There is bread and butter. There is gravy. There is battered halloumi. Everything is expertly fried, with burnished, golden brown crunchy chips ... and ... Are those scraps in the back? On hearing the words “anchovy mayo,” it’s even possible to forgive the mint in the mushy peas.

Walk into Marylebone’s The Golden Hind and on the left there is a board documenting the effect immigration has had on fish and chips development: First three Italian owners, then two Greek, now in the hands of Antonakis Christou, who has been at the helm since 2002. The hand on the fryer is light here, with more filigree batter. This tactic works better on the fish than on the chips: the fish still retains its flavour and the batter follows the line of the fish exactly, hugging it like a crisp, tailored suit, whereas the chips never descend into decadence in the way the best examples do. In a nod to the Italian/Greek heritage, the must order item on the entire menu may actually be the deep-fried fritters of cheese, feta or mozzarella, salty and sinful, arriving as oozing Kubrickian monoliths.

An official ranking of how to eat fish and chips? Number one: on a sofa with oily hands; number two: on a wall somewhere within a five minute walk of the chip shop, trying to balance condiments, a paper cone of chips and an unwieldy fried fish in oily and possibly dirty hands. Somewhere at the bottom: in an actual restaurant, with a knife and fork. Masters will remain one of the few exceptions to this rule. Sitting down carries the same ritual of Mark Renton laying out all his utensils: little, cold prawns in their shells, sliced baguette, packs of butter, wallys, pickled onions, cup of tea, goblets of ketchup and tartare. All this before the fish and chips actually arrive, with thirty years of experience behind them: crunchy, tanned chips, fish covered in batter to eat just by itself. Ignore the mustard fried option. Masters really is that rare thing: a tourist trap that is actually good.

Nautilus is good enough to base a ritual around, where almost nothing has changed in 40 years, not least the dessert menu which boasts delights such as “Tarta Fantastica” and “Bombed by Chocolate.” Expect to see them making a comeback at a cool Italian-inspired wine bar once the pandemic is over. The fish, unlike every other fish on this list, is fried in matzo, which means the coating adheres snugly to the flesh. The frying is technically precise, in a similar league to 40 Maltby Street’s gossamer fritters, which ensures crispness throughout without it ever feeling heavy on the stomach. The chips, a pale straw yellow, are curiously underfried in that very Greek way that keeps them greaseless but never dried out, although they still feel a little like chips for people giving up chips. There are rumours that of a well-done option: consider it. A few more minutes in the fryer, taking them to golden, and this could easily be London’s best fish and chip shop.

There should be a question on the U.K. citizenship test, asking, “under what circumstances will British people tolerate a bad pun as a shop name?” The answer? Hairdressers and chippies. Codfellas in Peckham is perhaps not as egregious at Battersea Cods Home, but on the same level as something like This Must Be The Plaice. It’s still open on Bellenden Road to collect from 12 - 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. onwards, for filigree battered fish, thin-shelled like a crisp wafer; or even tofish, a vegan substitute that consists of a perfectly rectangle block of tofu standing in for a fillet, with nori seaweed skin. Chips are decent.

The whole world can be found on Old Kent Road, but there is still room for Bert’s Fish Bar just off the main drag on East Street, which has been there — as residents might say — for donkey’s years. A common complaint of London fish and chips is that they simply aren’t decadent enough, that too often they don’t leave the stomach winded in a fat coma. There’s no such worry at Bert’s where the knobbly end of batter on the fish is as thick as an arm, giving an edible handle a Cornish miner would be proud off. The waiting time here has always been 15-20 minutes because that’s how long pleasure takes, with the reward of handsome, bronzed chips, as decadent and crunchy as they should be.