Poppies Comfort Food in Spitalfields: £20.99 Fish and Chips

Poppies Fish and Chips sits at 6-8 Hanbury Street, London E1 6QR, a three-minute walk from Spitalfields Market, and it is the restaurant where the whole Poppies story started. A regular haddock and chips costs £20.99 and a regular cod and chips £21.99, both served with homemade tartare sauce. When the weather turns grey and you want something hot, salty and familiar, this little retro diner and takeaway is about as direct a comfort food answer as East London offers.

Poppies says its founder, known to everyone as Pops, set the course for the business back in 1952. Hanbury Street was his first restaurant of his own, and the company describes it as the place that brought a 70-year-old Pat out of retirement to fulfil a lifelong dream: opening a traditional East End chippie that gave customers a taste of the old neighbourhood.

That backstory explains the room. The walls carry memorabilia, there is always music playing, and the seating is the red and white diner style you might expect from a post-war milk bar. Poppies calls itself a nostalgic throwback with good old cockney charm, and the staff play along without overdoing it. It feels less like a theme restaurant and more like a family business that never threw anything away.

There are now branches in Camden, Soho and Portobello, but Spitalfields is the original, and it is the one regulars recommend when someone asks where to try a proper London fish supper.

The fish is fried in groundnut oil, and the kitchen will switch to vegetable oil if you have a nut allergy. Haddock is the East End favourite, a little sweeter and flakier than cod, at £20.99 for a regular piece and £24.00 for a large. Cod is £21.99 regular and £25.50 large. Every fish meal comes with chips and the homemade tartare.

Beyond the big two, the menu goes deeper than most chippies. Rock costs £23.99, plaice fillet £19.99, and skate and a whole lemon sole are both £26.50. Wild halibut sits at the top at £26.95. Two grilled mackerel fillets are £15.99 if you would rather skip the batter, and a single homemade fishcake with chips is £11.99. A hot seafood platter of fish bites, scampi, calamari and whitebait is £20.99 as a main.

Ask for scraps, the crunchy bits of loose batter that collect in the fryer. They are free, and scattering them over your chips is an old London habit that Poppies keeps alive.

Not everyone at the table has to eat fish. A quarter rotisserie chicken with chips and gravy is £15.99 and a half is £19.99. A steak pie, chicken pie or Cornish vegetable pasty with chips is £12.50, and a saveloy or a plain or battered sausage with chips is £11.50. The kids' menu at £9.95 offers fish bites, a fishcake or a sausage, all with chips.

The sides are where a fish supper turns into the full comfort plate. Homemade mushy peas, garden peas, Heinz beans, curry sauce and Bisto gravy are £3.50 each. A pickled onion, a pickled egg or a gherkin, which the menu calls a wally in proper cockney, is £1.95. Two slices of bread and butter cost £1.95 too, which is all you need to build a chip butty at the table.

For the full East End experience, start with jellied eels at £10.95 or a hand-peeled prawn cocktail at £9.95. Puddings are £8.95 and include Cartmel sticky toffee pudding and a handmade Bramley apple pie, each with a scoop of ice cream. Soft serve from the Mister Twist machine is made with organic milk, and a classic 99 is £6.50.

Drinks keep to the theme. Poppies has its own Helles lager and pale ale on draught at £5.95 a half and £7.95 a pint, and there are Fentimans lemonade, cream soda and ginger beer for £4.50. Cocktails such as a mojito or an old fashioned are £8.95.

The Spitalfields shop works as both a sit-down diner and a takeaway counter. Sitting in suits a cold or wet evening, when the warm glow of the dining room is half the point, and you get your fish on a plate with cutlery and table service. Taking away suits a dry day, when you can carry the parcel a few minutes to the benches around Spitalfields Market or Allen Gardens.

Tables can be booked online, and Poppies asks groups of more than 20 to email the team at info@poppiesfishandchips.co.uk. Lunchtime on weekends brings market shoppers and visitors from Brick Lane, so a booking makes sense on a Saturday. Weekday afternoons are calmer, and the doors open at 11am every day if you want an early lunch before the office crowd arrives. Delivery runs through Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, and there is a click and collect option on the website.

If you are ordering for one, the regular portions are generous. Two people who want to try both fish can split a regular haddock and a regular cod with an extra portion of mushy peas and still have room for a 99 cone.

Hanbury Street runs between Commercial Street and Brick Lane, so a fish supper here fits neatly into a slow wander. Spitalfields Market is three minutes away for vintage stalls and food traders under the Victorian roof. Christ Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor's white limestone church, rises over Commercial Street a short stroll south.

Walk east and you reach Brick Lane, with its bagel bakeries, curry houses and weekend markets in the Old Truman Brewery yards. The Georgian terraces of Fournier Street and Princelet Street, built for Huguenot silk weavers, are worth a detour on the way back. On a clear evening you can also walk to the Sky Garden in about 20 minutes, or to the Gherkin in about 15.

Address: 6-8 Hanbury St, London E1 6QR, the restaurant Pop opened as his first of his own. Open Monday to Wednesday from 11am to 10pm, Thursday to Saturday from 11am to 11pm, and Sunday from 11am to 10pm. The address, phone number and daily hours are taken from the Spitalfields page of the official site, https://poppiesfishandchips.co.uk/poppies-spitalfields/, and the story of Pop's first restaurant is told on that same page. Prices come from the official menu page, https://poppiesfishandchips.co.uk/menu/. A regular haddock and chips is £20.99 (large £24.00), a regular cod and chips £21.99 (large £25.50), and homemade mushy peas £3.50.

Shoreditch High Street Overground station is a five-minute walk, Aldgate East is about nine minutes and Liverpool Street is about ten. Let the staff know about any allergies before you order, because allergens are present in the kitchen. If you want a backup when the dining room is full, the Karpo APP can point you toward other fish and chips and comfort food spots open nearby.