Balmoral Fish & Chips — Restaurant in Ajax

As a Brit, I'm always looking for British style fish and chips. I tried to go to the Balmoral one evening but it was closed, so I forgot all about it.This weekend I tried again and was glad that I did. There was no one in there, which made me wonder if the place was any good. The restaurant wasn't very inviting from the exterior or within with wobbly tables, out dated decor and uncomfortable chairs The experience was altogether bit odd. A young child who most likely wasn't old enough to be working bought us menus and took our drinks order, I'm guessing she was the daughter of the owners. Then a woman, who appeared to be part of a husband/wife team came to take our order. The child made a mistake with our drinks order and there was subsequently some shouting at her in an Asian language. What appeared to be the husband who was manning the kitchen, prepared our food. The drinks arrived and I was pleased that my tea bag had been put in the pot when the hot water was poured instead of leaving on the side for me to do it. The menu selection was a bit odd - if you picked the 'meal' your choice of side was coleslaw, mushy peas and beets??, it also came with 'Scottish bread'. A generous 2 slices of white bread, though slightly stale. The butter was too hard to spread, even by the time we'd eaten our meal it was still too firm. There were choices of fish; cod, halibut, haddock, with some very good specials on grouper and a mysterious white fish, but I went with the cod. I believe the meal was around $15. When it arrived it was hot. There was one good size piece of cod and a medium sized serving of chips. There wasn't any option for two pieces as with other restaurants, but I always find two pieces is too much. The chips were excellent. The fish was well cooked, flaky and moist. The batter was light and crispy. The tartare sauce unfortunately was in small fiddly packets, not the creamy home made kind and there wasn't any lemon served with the fish, but all in all, the food was good and priced reasonably. The cod and chips without the extras was around $11 as I recall. All in all it was an enjoyable meal, though the restaurant has no ambience and I wasn't partial to the loud discussions coming from the kitchen between the husband and wife. It's always struck me as rude to use a foreign language in the workplace and many corporations have policies on this very thing, but I suppose you can't have everything and a decent meal for a decent price is what I was hoping for and received. I will probably go back to try their steak and kidney pie...

To be fair I have ordered from them twice only because sometimes you can get one bad order but in this case not only was the first order bad the second was even worse. Not sure if they are using lard to cook their fish and chips but it felt that way. Very greasy fries and fish not sure it was Haddock. For two orders of fish and chips was $36.10. Quite expensive and was horrible. Fish had no taste and texture very bad. Batter was just non edible. Fries were just simply full of some kind of cheap grease and very disgusting. I really hate to bash family businesses but in my opinion, walk 30 feet to MacKenzies and get great fish and chips on Friday for $12.99 and is amazing. Skip this place its not worth the money and you...

Excellent Fish & Chips (and other menu items) cooked and served by Mary and her husband (who are always very welcoming) at Balmoral Fish & Chips. Additional staff (Emily) also very nice. My father used to go 3 times a week (sometimes with my mother) for 8 years until recently deceased. He considered it disrespectful to go anywhere else and sang the praises of Balmoral Fish & Chips to everyone he knew. My spouse and I went with him on numerous occasions (and still go ourselves) and were pleased every single time. If you are looking for a very nice location for Fish & Chips, look no further than Balmoral Fish & Chips. You will not be...