The Fish & Chip Shop - Liverpool Street

Dashwood House 69 Old Broad Street, London, EC2M 1NA

What do tourists eat in England? That's right, fish 'n' chips. Great big pieces of questionable white fish, lathered in a thick soggy batter, and fried in oil so filthy it could pass for crude. They'll pay dearly for the privilege and leave thinking England's culinary excellence is as overstated as its football team. A big 'Thank you!' to every chain-owned pub around Covent Garden.

It doesn't have to be like this and The Fish & Chip Shop shows how it should be done. Delicate white fish, encased in a light crisp batter. That's it, nothing else needs to be said - on the fish at least.

The Fish & Chip Shop 'chain' have two restaurants, one in Islington and one in the City. Tucked along an alleyway just off Liverpool Street, next door to the picturesque lawn of a church, and opposite the old Dollhouse Gentleman's Club, this new branch sparkles warmly through an L-shaped wall of glass. Inside, an oval bar is surrounded by small round tables for four and booths for a couple more. It's clean, crisp like the fish, and very welcoming - the theatrics of the guy on the door would please the tourists too.

Served promptly and politely, with two courses polished off in an hour, there aren't many complaints from me really. The insistence on bringing my food in separate bowls is a slight gripe. The fish looked lonely and less than impressive sat on its own. This is a hearty meal and I want to see a piping hot plate, spilling over as chips fight fish fight peas for the precious space of the enamel. The chips are the wrong sort too. They're fat, but they crunch. Where are the soggy chips that fall apart in your hands as you overload them with ketchup or curry sauce?

The minor gripes aside, plus an additional one for glass of ice with my beer (really? I don't know what that's about), I'd give The Fish & Chip Shop a healthy seal of approval, if I gave out such things. Definitely worth a visit if the queue for Poppies is too staggeringly huge, which it always seems to be.

Sutton & Son's - Stoke Newington

90 Stoke Newington High Street, London, N16 7NY

Delicious as they are, fish and chips tend to weigh heavily on the stomach. With a large dose of carbohydrate and fat coursing through your veins comes the desire to sip tea, curl up on the floor in a darkened room, and boil mushroom soup for dinner. It's perhaps foolish then to attempt two in one day, but Renton always had an excuse for feeding his addiction and so did I. Friends from out-of-town looking to sample a hit of Ye Olde English Fish 'n' Chips for lunch - the best the Mother Superior had to offer, although even he may have baulked at dousing the batter with eight spoons of English mustard - followed by an invite to Sutton & Son's from Hoxton Radio's very own Richard Branson.

Stoke Newington High Street is a typical London mess of shops selling one pound bowls of fruit and cheap phone-cards, interspersed with quirky coffee shops and old boozers now scrubbed, tarted, and serving wine by the bottle. Sutton & Son's definitely falls in to this new London category. What could have been a standard greasy fryer has been kitted-out neatly with wooden tables and benches, a cabinet of fresh fish with heads intact, beer from Hackney, wine from further-a-field, and a menu of more than just good batter and chips. Based on the queue at the counter they were clearly doing well on the batter, so I took the opportunity to branch out. My stomach still squirming under the weight of lunch, the fish pie caught my eye and the managers ringing endorsement sealed the deal. He wasn't wrong. While some pie addicts may cringe at the use of the word for something covered in mash, not pastry, I've not had a fish pie without it. Underneath this layer of golden potato lay a creamy sauce coating prawns, chunks of salmon and haddock. Rather than buried beneath a mound of seasoning and (yet more) mustard, as with so many fish pies, the flavour of the fish shone through here. Nor was flesh substituted with boiled egg - a classic trick of the tight chef - this was a healthy hit of fish for your money. The broccoli on the side was fresh and tender, perhaps too much salt, but then I was feeling slightly sensitive to the stuff after a day of over-indulgence.

Not being as far from central London as I first thought, Sutton & Son's is definitely worth a trip. So once Santa delivers some waterproof trousers, jump on your bike and peddle hard through the rain. Richard Branson did and I don't think he regretted it either.