Kingfisher — Restaurant in Wakefield

I was persuaded to go to The Kingfisher Fish Restaurant by my partner who loathes chain restaurants of all types. How right he was but I was not expecting the experience I finally savoured.

Nice smart clean decor, including the toilets.

Met by a smiling waitress and refreshingly asked which table we would prefer. We were seated, given menus and brought top quality condiments and sauces.

We both decided on medium haddock fillet with chips tea and bread and butter included in the price. Bread qood quality and butter portions you could spread easily.

Tea was Yorkshires finest and piping hot with enough hot water and milk for three cups each.

The fish and chips soon arrived and how anyone could eat a big haddock if this was the medium is beyond me. The medium ones were huge!

The fish was hot and freshest ever with a thick bright white skinless meaty flesh with no bones, covered in a light crispy well cooked airy batter. It was heaven on your fork!!! Nice large piece of good quality lemon on the side thank you. The ungreasy chips were again obviously freshly cooked and hot hot hot.

If ever a meal is not 100% I try to leave a positive spin with my comments. Not so here.

I asked the lady who the fryer was as he cetainly knows every aspect of his job. To my surprise he came out and I thanked him for producing such a feast.

Time to confess. I have had fish and chip shops and fish restaurants most of my long life but I would have been hard pushed to better this food and total ambience. We then discussed everything including potatoes, fish batter frying medium and temperatures at length and this young man knows far more than I did at his age about his craft and method.

This meal was so good it's only the rules of swearing that stop me from saying that the whole experience was da da da...

Not the cheapest but defiantly the best. Even got my mothers approval which is saying something. I never got it lol

Fish always good quality and my assumption is that they are cutting from 32+ FAS which would explain the quality.

Great to see that the employer is giving a whole range of people employment. 99% of them are awesome, polite and even the young ones (particularly the lads)talk in more than one word sentences (I live in a house of grunts). Such a rarity these days.

So why not 5 star. First, I never 5 star anything (yet). We will call this a 4.5

A quarter star is taken off for the eye rolling, sighing lady who is sometime serving (I once saw a 10 year old ask for a fish butty cut in half. the sigh as she had to go get a knife was not polite)..... no reflection on any of the other staff.

The other quarter star is personal bug bear of mine. The reliance on the modern fangled till system and modern way of getting chips. I prefer to see memory and mental arithmetic used and getting hot chips with a chip scoop into a chip bag which your holding in your bare hands....... I know..... it's 2022 but chippies should stay in the 90s lol.

There's an old......[er] guy, I think he's the boss. He wear the shirt of another chippy sometimes. He has the spirit of a chippy. I could actually picture pulling a counter shift with him lol.

Bottom line. Best chippy around. I used to know only one better in Hillsborough but that went down hill...

Kingfisher fish shop I've knocked you down to 2 stars as a wake up call, because you are now taking the micky with your restaurant portion sizes for the money in my recent experiences. This has gone on for the past several visits. Your so called large portion at nearly £20 I stopped buying, because they were as similarly small as my partner's regular portion. Your extra large portion is what I'd call a special at around £25 each, and in context that's £100 for one meal for a family of four, no starters or deserts! The photo provided is the portion of regular fish and chips that were £32.50 for two people with a slice of bread, cup of tea, and one peas. For scale the fish was two fish goujons in size the tail was hollow batter, with a few chips on the side. I would say it was a childs portion, certainly not enough for a fully grown man! Fish was gone in in three mouthfuls. It was worth half what you charge, or the same as a kids portion. I know there is inflation, but you will be making a healthy margin serving such small portions at £32.50 a time. It also left a bitter taste complaining in front of the restaurant. As I laid my money out I thought about how many meals I could have made at home for the same money. I made a sandwich when back as I was...