CULTURE | HISTORY | FOOD
Fish and Chips: Classic Staple of… the Iberian Sephardic Diaspora?
Britain’s national dish arrived with boatloads of asylum-seekers, turning the self-image of insular nationalists on its head
Spain is a land of great gastronomic riches. From the paella and tapas that everyone knows, through fancier foodie faves like gazpacho and jamón serrano, to the more rarefied delights of callos a la madrileña (‘Madrid-style tripe’) and migas (‘breadcrumbs’¹).
Something for everyone to explore and enjoy.
Yet if I head a few miles from my home down to the coast, specifically the Rincón de Loix district of Benidorm, all that dietary diversity is reduced to just two options: ‘full English breakfast’ and ‘fish ’n’ chips’.
We aren’t in Alicante any more, Toto.
More than any other dish — with sincere apologies to pork pies, steak and kidney puddings and toad-in-the-hole² — it is fish and chips that flies the flag for Britain, defines the nation’s culinary identity. So much so that British holidaymakers of the more insular variety, fearful of bewilderment or adulteration by funny foreign flavours during a two-week package of sunburn and hangovers, insist on its presence…
