Not owning a car, I asked my friend James to drive me out to Lee Valley Tools, way out in the untamed hinterland of Scarborough. On the way out there, he asked if I wanted to stop at this fish & chips place he had been going to since he was just a wee little guy. Never one to pass up an opportunity to eat, I of course said “sure.”

Now, I am quite an afficianado of the fish and chip. The best fish and chips I ever had, I think, was at Mom’s Diner in Sooke on Vancouver Island. Man, that was good. Another standout in my mind is a little take-out shack (Lakeview? something like that) north of the pier in Port Dover, Ont. I was once told that this was one of the two major fish and chip superpowers in Port Dover, the other of which served breaded fish, as opposed to the batter that the fish in the Lakeview is swathed. In fact, they (the Lakeview) was once forced to take down a sign that read “The Port Dover Home for Battered Fish.”

But all that’s really tangential to my trip out to Duckworth’s. Walking in, you notice that the first three things on the chalkboard menu are “Fish and Chips,” “Fish,” and “Chips.” OK, fairly straightforward so far. The standard here is haddock, but you can also get some other kinds of fish both above and below this on the quality scale. I seem to remember cod and orange roughy as two of the several options, or you could also go for the battered shrimp (I’ll never say something like that without thinking of the alleged former sign in Port Dover).

So, we got a couple of the standard haddock and chip plates, a couple of pops, and an order of bread. The fish was pretty good, I have to say; not too greasy, fried in clean oil, not too batter-ey (battery?), solid and flaky. Not on the level of the above-mentioned places, but certainly one of the better plates of fried fish I’ve had in town. The chips were peeled (I actually prefer unpeeled potatoes, but to each his own) and fresh-sliced. The bread was a nonstandard and very welcome addition to the classic dish; big, solid, and fresh, it’s quite refreshing and serves to cut the oil quite nicely.

And that’s that. Some places just don’t need to do anything else.