A Few Words About ‘The Bloody Best Fish & Chips Lunch Ever’

For the November issue of D Magazine, an artist and Englishman called Richard Patterson embarked on a quest to find the best fish and chips in Dallas. He returned with about 25,000 words that had very little to do with fish or chips and more to do with living as an expat on this strange prairie. I cut his dispatch down to about 5,000 words. If you haven’t yet read it, you should. Richard also did, in fact, write about the food. His ranking is right here. And here is how chef Nick Barclay, the Dallas god of cod, cooks his stuff.

About the latter: since Nick does not (for now) have his own restaurant, we thought it would be fun to ask him to make lunch for 84 people at his buddy Jim “Sevy” Severson’s joint, Sevy’s Grill. D Magazine subscribers got the first crack at tickets; they sold out quickly. We all gathered Saturday to break bread and batter.

It goes without saying that the fish and chips were the best I’ve ever eaten. Nick’s experience in the kitchen (and his exclusive arrangement with a secret fish supplier) guaranteed the food itself would be brilliant. The real fun for me was enjoying the atmosphere that Sevy created for us, the interactions I had with subscribers, the thoughtful words Richard delivered before our Champagne was poured, the details about seafood sourcing I learned from Nick in his postprandial Q&A—the occasion of it all.

After the two-hour meal, Richard and I were talking to a kind woman whose accent revealed she was not from here. She thanked us (which thanks belonged to Nick and Sevy) and parted by saying, “This was massive. It was an actual event.” So it was.

Richard wrote to me in an email this morning: “It was really touching how many people seem to have actually read the article and that many of them got that it described more than fish and chips but some other existential yearning about life in Dallas. Maybe many Americans move cities a lot, so it’s about being away from home and trying to find home. I can’t stress enough the value of sitting and eating with people communally and not having twattish loud music.”

Communality. That’s what I enjoyed so much. If you’d like to be part of it next time we do something like this (and we will), I think you know how to get the invite.

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Tim is the editor of D Magazine, where he has worked since 2001. He won a National Magazine Award in…