The Best Fish and Chips in Dallas Returns on a Food Truck - D Magazine

A year after closing its brick-and-mortar store in Richardson, Fish & Fizz is taking its fryers on the road.

The restaurant announced on Instagram over the weekend that it has commissioned a food truck named "Chip" that will be specifically designed to serve fish and chips all over Dallas-Fort Worth. Owner Nick Barclay expects Chip to begin rolling around April, and he's already received dozens of offers to park his truck.

"There are a whole mixture of breweries, shops," he says. "There's a lady in Celina who's got 18 acres who was like, 'I'd love to have you out here.' I've got all sorts of restaurants as well."

It's exciting news for enthusiasts of fish and chips. For the November 2023 issue of D, artist and Englishman Richard Patterson wrote a monster of an essay detailing his journey to find the best fish and chips in Dallas. He concluded that Fish & Fizz's fish and chips were the best, perfect, 10/10. The bummer was, at the time, there was no way to get it because the storefront had closed. To get a taste, we held an event for subscribers at Sevy's Grill where Barclay made lunch for about 80 people. It was, in the words of readers and editors, "the bloody best fish and chips lunch ever."

Soon we'll be able to taste them again. (Patterson is not active on social media, so Barclay called him as soon as we got off the phone. He knows now!) Barclay says Chip will exclusively sell fish and chips. The brick-and-mortar served other things such as bangers and mash and Cornish pasties, but the majority of its sales were fish and chips. The food truck is going to be "super focused" on the dish.

"It is designed only for fish and chips. I have nothing else in the food truck," he says. "Actually, I've got more frying capacity in this food truck than at Fish & Fizz."

Barclay says he'll prepare the fish and chips in a commissary kitchen before hitting the road. He has a few kitchen options already lined up. Fryers will be filled with oil when the team reaches its destination to prevent hauling around vats of hot liquid from place to place. They'll be drained before hitting the road again.

A fish and chips food truck brings back fond memories for Barclay. When he was a kid in England, there were plenty of vans that would park in various neighborhoods and sell freshly fried battered fish. He's fairly certain those vans weren't sloshing around oil in the back, so he has plenty of examples from which to model his operation: "It's been done for a long, long time," he says.

Barclay jokes that he's going backward; most restaurants start with food trucks and then move into brick-and-mortars. While there was a lot of success with the Richardson location, there were issues with the lease agreement. After five years of operating, Fish & Fizz had to suddenly close. Barclay says it wasn't ideal, but he's grateful so many loyal fans have hung around.

"I always like to say if you're going to leave something, always try to leave when the elevator's on the top floor rather than when it's going down," he says. "Once you take away something that people enjoy, scarcity creates desire in an odd sort of way."

Fans have remained glued to Fish & Fizz's social media accounts for news of a comeback. The reaction to the announcement of the food truck has blown him away. Chip's schedule is already filling up. In April, Fish & Fizz will be at the All British & European Car Day at White Rock Lake Park. Barclay says he plans to go all over D-FW, including suburbs like Prosper, Garland, and Frisco, as well as our sister city to the west, Fort Worth. He's had requests to head down to Austin, too.

A future brick-and-mortar is not out of the question, Barclay says, but his immediate focus is on the food truck. No brick-and-mortar means more flexibility and freedom, so we'll be chasing Chip everywhere come springtime.

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Nataly Keomoungkhoun

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Nataly Keomoungkhoun joined D Magazine as the online dining editor in 2022. She previously worked at the Dallas Morning News,…