Kingfisher Fish & Chips Gluten-free Menu

Thanks to a tip off from Coeliac UK Plymouth group member Matt Gifford, I recently discovered that Kingfisher Fish & Chips in Chaddlewood Shopping Centre are now serving gluten free fish and chips every Monday.  With the uncertainty surrounding the sale of Eggbuckland Fish and Chip shop at the time this was very welcome news indeed.  Thankfully the Eggbuckland sale has now been completed and the new owners have confirmed that gluten free nights will continue on the first Monday of every month.

There are a few other chip shops in Plymouth serving gluten free on various days or indeed daily in some cases: The Chip Stop in Stoke, Honicknowle Fish and Chip Shop, Francine’s in North Prospect and I believe Thank Cod it’s Fryday in Pennycross still serve gluten free too.  The Rock Fish restaurant on the Barbican are also serving gluten free.  I am not sure of the cross contamination controls at any of these restaurants though, so please do you own research if you are going to try them.  Please feel free to comment below if you have tried any of these or indeed own or work at one of them.

I’ve always liked Eggbuckland as their gluten free day is totally GF, so no need to worry about potential cross contamination.  However, with the sale process going through there hasn’t been a gluten free night there for a couple of months (they are back 1st July!), and after seeing a few tweets about Kingfisher after the initial heads up from Matt I decided to investigate a little further.  I noticed that Kingfisher have started to push gluten free quite hard via Twitter now, and I was impressed with the gluten free information on their website.

Kingfisher use a separate fryer which is cleaned prior to being used for GF and loaded with clean oil.  They also state “all other equipment is used solely for the purpose of gluten free to prevent cross contamination”.  Gluten free is served all day on Monday’s with no need for advance warning and is cooked fresh to order.  Batter is made on-site using their regular recipe with gluten free flour.  GF vinegar is also stocked, and no extra is charged for gluten free orders.  Having a wife who works in environmental marine policy I was also very impressed that Kingfisher are very proud of the fact all of the fish is caught sustainably, with the cod, haddock and hake being MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) certified.  They were also finalists in the 2014 National Fish & Chip Awards.

So after reading all this I was sold.  I’d been tweeting owner Craig for a few weeks and let him know I was coming as I was eager to have a chat with him when I got there.  Ironically living by the sea I don’t eat fish so my choice from the gluten free menu was a little limited.  I’d previously mentioned to Craig on Twitter that it would be great to see a battered sausage on the menu, which he was very keen to look into.  The power of Twitter worked it’s magic and before we knew it Craig was in contact with a local company who are dropping off some sample gluten free sausages soon, so which this space.  It would have been good to try the batter, but I often went for chicken and chips in my pre-coeliac days so this was an easy choice.

While my food was being freshly cooked I was able to have a good chat with Craig.  They have been serving gluten free since January after several requests from customers and friends.  They have been working hard to make sure they have the correct procedures in place and increased menu options and are now happy that they can do things properly which is why they’ve started pushing this recently.  Craig actually thinks the gluten free batter gives a crisper result than the normal batter which is a good sign.  It was good to hear Craig’s enthusiasm for gluten free and his desire to make sure things are done properly.  Kingfisher obviously have some happy customers, and one punter that has been going there for 10 years witnessed our conversation and came up to tell us how great everything was!

Onto the food.  No old school newspaper here, the food is served in a swanky Kingfisher box, and it was reassuring to see a gluten free sticker on top of mine as there were gluten filled fish and chips being cooked in other areas of the shop.  It was obvious that everything had been cooked freshly and it was still pipping hot by the time I had driven home.  The portion size was very large and at £5.75 for chicken and a large portion of chips I had no complaints about the price.  There was apparently lots of other gluten free customers tucking in yesterday too which is good to hear.

The quality of the food was excellent and I’ll definitely be back again for more.  A friend whose family also tried Kingfisher for the first time yesterday told me on Facebook “We all agreed that it is the best gf fish and chips we have had“.  The only downside for me was that there was no gluten free curry sauce to dunk my chips in but I’m happy to report that Craig is going to look into this as well as the battered sausages.  So even though gluten was being served in the shop at the same time, I’m happy to report that the cross contamination controls in place were good enough and I suffered no ill affects, other than a severe case of over indulgence!

You can find Kingfisher at: Chaddlewood Shopping Centre, Glen Road, Plympton, Plymouth, PL7 2XS.  For more information see their website, Twitter and Facebook pages.

Kevin, Gluten Free by the Sea

Tags: coeliac, fish and chips, food, gluten free, gluten free diet, gluten free food, plymouth, restaurant, sustainable