The price of a bag of chips varies considerably depending on where you’re placing your order
A small portion of chips from Byrne’s in Walton
It’s National Fish and Chip Day, which means it’s the perfect opportunity to tuck into a bag of piping hot chippy chips, drowning in salt and vinegar and accompanied by a crispy battered fish. The national day is celebrated every year on the first Friday of June in the UK, which falls on Friday, June 6 this year.
Merseyside has a wealth of incredible fish and chip shops, which you can read about in the ECHO’s tried and tested guide to the best in our region. Each establishment has its own way of doing things – and its own pricing structure.
The ECHO was recent sent a table of data which claimed Liverpool was among the most expensive places in the UK to pick up a fish supper. The study used prices gleaned from Just Eat and independent searches to find the average price of a portion of fish and chips in 50 locations across the UK.
This study claimed Liverpool was among the top 10 most expensive cities for fish and chips, sitting at sixth place in the table with an average price of £13.77. The traditional fish supper has seen the biggest price increase of some of the UK’s most popular takeaways, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The average price for a portion of fish and chips rose more than 50% to nearly £10 in the five years to July 2024. Chip shop owners have cited a “perfect storm” of costs in recent years, including soaring energy bills, tariffs on seafood imports and extreme weather hammering potato harvests.
With the cost of a fish supper at the forefront of our minds, we headed out to three Liverpool chippies – each of which is an institution in its own right. To keep things fair, we looked at the same item on each menu – a small portion of chips. We decided to visit one chippy in the north end of the city, one in the south end and another in the city centre, to see how the price of a bag of chips varies.
Byrne’s, Walton
Small bag of chips £3.20 / Large bag of chips £3.60
If you ask someone what the best chippy in Liverpool is, there’s a solid chance they’ll point you in the direction of Byrne’s. It’s been a favourite with generations of Scousers, and with good reason. Located on Stuart Road, it first opened in 1932 with Patrick Joseph Byrnes at the helm – and it’s still family owned and operated nearly 100 years later.
Byrne’s prides itself on the freshness of its produce – and it shines through from the second you step through the front door. We visited Byrne’s at 12pm on a Friday – just 15 minutes after it had opened for the day and there was already a queue out the door.
Most of the customers who walked in were greeted by name, and everyone’s order was made fresh in front of them by friendly staff who clearly take great pride in the meals they serve every day.
The freshness of the ingredients certainly comes across in the taste – and you’d be hard pressed to find a single fault with a takeaway from this chippy.
Priced at £3.20 for a small bag of chips, it was the priciest of our orders today – but the quality of the food you’re served means you don’t think twice about paying it. The portion is generous and a ‘small’ is absolutely enough to share for a lunchtime treat.
The owners of Byrne’s are no strangers to the difficult financial circumstances faced by so many chippy owners – and in 2022 they took the difficult decision to close a second site on Muirhead Avenue East on the border of Norris Green and West Derby.
Speaking to the ECHO at the time, they said: “We haven’t lost any customers, the overheads have just gone berserk.”
Steve’s
Small bag of chips £2.90 / Large bag of chips £3.50
Another chippy that’s always busy is Steve’s in Aigburth. A small bag of chips from here will set you back £2.90 – making it the cheapest on our chippy tour.
The family favourite has been serving customers since 1956 and you’re guaranteed to find a queue out the door on weekends. Plenty of customers visit the takeaway for their extensive menu of Chinese meals – but you can’t go wrong with a classic fish supper from this south Liverpool institution.
Owner Bekas in Steve’s fish and chip shop in Aigburth(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
The ECHO’s Maria Breslin shared her love of the popular takeaway in our tried and tested guide to the region’s best chippies. She said: “On an average Friday night the queue outside Steve’s snakes down Ashfield Road. On Good Friday it stretches down to the Vale and beyond. That’s because Steve’s is a first-class, family-run chippy which has stood the test of time and is worth the wait.
“It opened its doors way back in 1956 and moved to its current premises eight years later. Spotlessly clean with friendly and chatty staff, a stroll to Steve’s is always so much more satisfying than ordering in – though I would recommend calling ahead with your order if you want to swerve that queue.
“Like most Liverpool chippies, the menu at Steve’s is vast with the takeaway serving everything from burgers and kebabs, Chinese dishes, Holland’s pies, pineapple fritters and the classic mixed grill. There’s even fresh salad inexplicably on the menu. But for me it’s all about the fish and chips.
An order from Steve’s chippy in Aigburth
“A good-size fish, which flakes into delicious chunks and is never overcooked, encased in a golden brown batter that is crisped to perfection.
“Served with the finest chips south Liverpool has to offer, doused in vinegar alongside a healthy dollop of mushy peas, a recently acquired taste, it is the perfect Friday night takeaway. In fact, perfect on any night.”
Yanni’s
Small bag of chips £3 / Large bag of chips £3.50
Yanni’s is located in Liverpool city centre, just opposite the M&S department store. You’d expect to pay a bit of a city centre premium for your chips at this location – but it turned out to be the middle option in our price comparison.
The city centre chippy recently received high praise from an self-proclaimed expert who has eaten in more than 120 chippies across the UK.
Stephen’s meal from Yanni’s(Image: Stephen Peel)
Stephen Peel, 62, has been eating at two fish and chip shops a week for the last 15 months. He started his The Chippy Tour to celebrate the iconic meal, which he says the country is in danger of losing, with many chip shops forced to close due to high costs. On his tour, Stephen has been rating chippies out of five.
Stephen travels around the country with a branded truck equipped with an electric food warmer that maintains a temperature of 65°C which is handy for winter reviews and allows him to park and review his food anywhere using its attached folding table.
Stephen has reviewed 15 chippies in Merseyside, with six of them in Liverpool. Out of all of them, his favourite is Yanni’s on Lord Street, which got five stars from him.
Yanni and Sandra Lawton from Yanni’s Traditional Fish & Chips on Lord Street, Liverpool. Photo by Colin Lane
The city centre chippy is run by Yanni Hamajan and his partner Sandra Lawton and people have travelled from as far as the USA and South Korea to try its food.
But Stephen says it was the customer service rather than the chips that impressed him the most. He said: “It was heaving when we went, but I loved it. Yanni and his wife were working like the clappers, and they were smiling. It was a lovely environment considering how busy it was.”
Stephen’s order from Yannis was fish and chips along with pots of mushy peas, gravy, and curry sauce. He ate it using his truck’s table in the coach park on Riverside Drive in Otterspool and was thoroughly impressed.