Just up Tower Hamlets Road by Tower Kebabs and Harveys, opposite RaySigns (just so you know exactly where we are), there is a chip shop. I have become utterly convinced that this chip shop is cursed.
There are a few little shops and businesses up that part of town, including a hearing aid shop, a jewellery shop and a few others. They all seem to do okay. Tower Kebabs has gone from strength to strength over the years under the same owner. But that chip shop, I just don't get it. It cannot stay in business for more than a few months before it goes bust. I am not kidding you, I have seen that little shop under new management and new ownership more times than I've had hot fish dinners. It has had countless owners, in the last 20 years or so (the era that I've been using it) we must be talking more than one owner per year in some cases. The last guy that owned it called it Thierry's Fish Bar and he worked really hard at making it look terrible with cast-off banners and posters, but I remember the god-fearing Christian cod man, the Yorkshire bloke who served gravy with chips, the guy who tried frying in real animal fat "instead of that sunflower nonsense", and many of the others who have been and gone.
London Road seems capable of accommodating countless takeaways which all survive next to each other, and I know that Dovorians love a bit of traditional cod and chips. Our local chippies don't have a bad habit of going bust! So, the fact that it is next door to a kebab shop should not, in theory, cause it to close all the time, and it sells things that locals enjoy.
So what is it about the chip shop on Tower Hamlets Road that it cannot stay in business regardless of who owns it or what novel feature they try to introduce? Even the run-of-the-mill ones who just serve plain old fish n chips have sunk without trace. It seems that NOTHING works.
The shop is currently empty (again). At some point in the distant past, some Ancient Egyptian mummy must have visited Dover and placed a curse on the shop because there is no logical reason that I can think of why this shop seems to fail time after time after time.
Any ideas?
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i always found it amusing to see a french tricolour fronting a chippie.
It is a strange phenomenon for sure. The only thing I can suggest is this. Car parking is hopeless there, and, if you have to use your car to get fish and chips, then deVitos up by Buckland Mill is must. Their fish and chips and range of pies is the best in Dover by some distance.
Maybe calling the place THierry's wasn't the cleverest idea either.
Guest 653- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,540
No idea Rick.
It may be as Sid said about parking, people generally are lazy when it comes to taking the car for a take-away, but that wouldn't explain why the kebab shop and others there, work quite well.
It's quite a distance to the next fish and chip ship along London Road - Tony's I think it's called; not been to Sid's recommendation and.
With all those residents within five or ten minutes walk, you'd think he'd do well.
Roger
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Ive spoken fairly recently to another well known chip shop owner and he has spoken of difficult times too, so it seems a fairly widespread thing. There is grumblings about DDC parking and so on, but also two further things play a part I suggest...
one is that the cost of these foods like fish n chips isnt quite so affordable any more...when you consider the customers who are likely to buy them most. The rarity of cod and so on
and
secondly the huge level of official information telling us all to cut down on fatty foods, perhaps this message is getting through and causing people to think twice.
Personally I love em, but on most week nights when you amble by these places they are nearly always totally empty nowadays.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
a decent sized piece of cod with chips is not the cheap meal it used to be as mentioned above.
i think the pies sell better nowadays.
Guest 641- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 2,335
Agreed, whilst in Camden this weekend I could'nt get over the price of a medium cod 'n chips £8.50
I'm also puzzled by the 'Cursed Chippie of olde Dover town'. Most are either doing well or just ticking over?
The problem of running a chippie is that eventually you will be battered.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Rick, although I'd have thought a lot depends on the chips that are dished out, and the sausages and pies too, especially as I am no kebab eater and would prefer the English chips, however, could it be that this is the shop that has been supplying gov. with chips and fish over the past twenty years? It might explain a lot!
Paul, I can fully grasp your views there in a recent context but the problems that this shop has had have been common for the last 20-plus years, through good times and bad, with prices up and down, serving food both excellent and limp. It seems to transcend economics, product quality, management personality, even parking. It just cannot stay functional for long regardless of the climate it is in.
Hence I think the shop has a curse on it.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
could be from above rick, you know what they say about "the wrath of cod".
Alec Sheldon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 18 Aug 2008
- Posts: 1,036
Wasn't it a Thai restuarant years ago.?
That was further down Alec, in what used to be the undertakers.
Alec Sheldon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 18 Aug 2008
- Posts: 1,036
Sid.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
surely opening a chippy with the name " corpses r us " was a non starter?
I hear they also tried "Stiffies".
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
on that subject is anne on line tonight?
i have a stiff neck of course!!
