UK: Rock & Sole Plaice

I don't know about you guys, but when I think British food, I think fish and chips.  We actually had fish and chips our first night together in London, but it was subpar and just...not very good.

Which called for a redo.  

So after a day of wandering around London, we stopped by Rock & Sole Plaice for dinner:

One thing we quickly noticed was that the prices were different for take out and eat in.  Being the cheap Asian tourists that we are, we were really tempted to buy dinner to go.  But then practicality reared its ugly head and we had to admit to ourselves that we had no idea where we could go to eat our fish.

We grumbled and mumbled, but we ended up taking table inside.

I never thought too deeply about fish and chips before I visited London.  Suddenly we were being asked to choose what KIND of fish we wanted.  Did we want rock?  Cod?  Haddock?  Plaice?  Skate?  Regular or large?

Uhhh...a little help please?

The guy who took our order tried to give us a brief run down of all the different kinds of fish, but he just confused us even more.

We finally decided that since we were at Rock & Sole, we should order exactly that.  One regular rock and one regular lemon sole.  Don't ask me which one was which.  I'm just gonna show you the pictures:

There's the other:

Just to switch things up a bit, we also ordered a saveloy (a London style smoked pork sausage):

Or as CL called it (after seeing a picture of it on Facebook), a "pathetic lookin' hot dog".  For the life of me I can't remember what it tasted like.

One important thing I learned in Europe was that nobody makes fries like Americans do.  It just tastes better in the States.  The fries or "chips" we encountered in London were all unseasoned and...mushy.

The fish was freshly fried, which was great.  But British people apparently don't salt their fish first though.  Is that a British thing?  Maybe that's what the malt vinegar and tartar sauce are for.  I dunno.  I like my fish seasoned.

I wanted to try sticky toffee pudding before we left London, so we ordered one:

The cake was strangely...burnt tasting.  Almost unpleasantly so.  The sauce helped mellow out the bitterness a bit.

Rock & Sole Plaice definitely served better fish than the place we went to our first night in London, but I think my favorite fried fish still remains at Boiling Crab.



Rock & Sole Plaice

47 Endell St
London WC2H 9AJ, United Kingdom
+44 20 7836 3785
http://www.rockandsoleplaice.com/