On a recent trip to Manchester, my luvley wife, daughter and I went on a coach trip with a group of…read morefriends to Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District.
Though it was a cloudy and breezy day, the temperature was quite reasonable for walking the hilly streets and popping in and out of all of the shops. Such a lovely town.
With all of that walking, we quickly burned off our light early morning breakfast and stopped in at a patio bar on the main street for a couple of glasses of bubbles and a soda for our daughter while we decided what to do for lunch.
I had done some research on the several chippies in town, looking to go beyond the normal fish and chips to scampi and chips. I read that the best scampi is had with full tail langoustine, and that some "scampi" actually contains fish pieces.
I asked the bartender her opinion of the best shop in town, and right away she mentioned one that I had read about, Vinegar Jones. In fact, it was right up the street.
We made a bee-line for the shop and so had a lot of others as the line snaked out the door. Wanting our fix bad enough, I got in line and ordered fish for the ladies and scampi for myself while my luvley wife and daughter headed upstairs to see if there was seating available, despite the sign on the counter that read "Upstairs Full". They found a table just in time so as I paid for our order, I was told it would be delivered upstairs shortly.
The upstairs room is smallish, but had comfortable seating and a nice view out over the main street.
Our orders arrived quickly, and the large pieces of fish were ever so gorgeous, piping hot and glistening on beds of chips. It tasted so fresh. But the star of my show was the scampi, full tail tasty nuggets of beauty. With little packets of tartar sauce and a full bottle of malt vinegar in hand, we were in chippy heaven.
We had two other meals of fish and chips during our stay in Manchester, but none matched the quality and fresh taste of Vinegar Jones. Cheers!