Something fishy in Thorndon

Thorndon has a long his­tory with greasies, includ­ing Dav­id Lange’s fish & chips bri­gade in 1980. I remem­ber buy­ing fish’n chips from that same store (where Cel­lar­vate is now, I believe) and eat­ing them on Par­lia­ment’s lawn after a big leg­al­ise can­nabis protest in high school (so I guess 1996?). Sadly that fish & chips shop closed down a while ago, and while it was rumoured the own­ers were run­ning the place near New World Chaf­fers, that is also sadly now closed as well.

Nat­ur­ally, Tinakori Vil­lage is far too civ­il­ised and twee to allow a takeaway place to open, but Star­fish by New World Thorndon has reli­ably been turn­ing out crisp chips and fresh fish for a good num­ber of years (since Novem­ber 1998, accord­ing to Twit­ter). But this is Thorndon, and a stand­ard fish’n chips shop is nev­er going to be enough. So we’ve got some good news.

Remem­ber how excited every­one in Mount Vic­tor­ia was when the Mt Vic Chip­pery opened in 2012? Finally fish’n chips had reached the sunny slopes! The Chip­pery has been doing so well that they’ve decided to expand to the shady side of town as well. We atten­ded the open­ing last Monday (they’re open to the pub­lic from today – appar­ently they received 11 orders in their first 15 minutes of being open) and we liked what we saw.

The Thorndon branch of  The Chip­pery is at 10 Murphy Street, which you may remem­ber from its pre­vi­ous incarn­a­tion as Le Canard (I guess they’re just focus­sing on their duck truck now?) There is a chan­delier, because of course there is, because it’s Thorndon, darling. The beau­ti­ful bar is made from reclaimed wood from the old Whitcholls store.There are a couple of high com­mun­al tables and also little sets of tables and chairs – a couple out on the pave­ment – so you can dine in if you choose. Excel­lent if you are one of the many pub­lic ser­vants in the area des­per­ate to escape your desk for half an hour at lunch­time.

At the open­ing we ate sal­mon ceviche on corn chips (deli­cious!) and pulled pork sliders (we ima­gine these to be the mini ver­sion of the pork bur­gers on the menu and avoided the oysters which were no doubt deli­cious if you like that sort of thing. So this is the thing. You might think that Thorndon already has a per­fectly good fish & chips shop in Star­fish, which it does, but The Chip­pery has a much wider offer­ing. There’s  five kinds of chips, for starters, and six ways to have whatever fish they have on the day, then things like grilled sal­mon, a seper­ate fry­er for glu­ten-free cook­ing, and fresh-made salads avail­able too. It’s going to appeal to a dif­fer­ent audi­ence, and we ima­gine it will do very well. Hur­ray for diversity!

Oh and also – hur­ray for hav­ing a web­site that dis­plays loc­a­tions, open­ing times, con­tact details and a menu ALL ON ITS FRONT PAGE. Let that be an inspir­a­tion to the rest of you.