Wellington Chippie Named Nation’s Best

Click to enlarge
(l-r) Fish Boys co-owners Vinnie Phillips and Peter Cleaver at Fish Boys.

MEDIA RELEASE
22 November 2006

WELLINGTON CHIPPIE NAMED NATION’S BEST

Fish Boys of Petone, Wellington has today been crowned the winner of this year’s Crisco Oils Best New Zealand Chip Shop Competition.

The six regional winners are as follows:

Northland to Auckland’s North Shore Region
Twilight Zone
Marsden Road
Paihia

Rest of Auckland Region
Oceanz Seafood
451 Ti Rakau Drive
Botany Downs
Auckland

Waikato to Wanganui, Hawkes Bay Region
Westshore Fish Cafe
112A Charles Street
Westshore
Napier

Manawatu to Wellington Region
Fish Boys – regional winner and overall national Winner
Cnr Jackson and Collins Streets
Petone

Nelson, Marlborough to Christchurch Region
Fishmongers
177 Victoria Street
Christchurch

Timaru to Southland Region
Big Ev’s
Cnr Lincoln and London Streets
Hampton

Goodman Fielder Commercial General Manager Sales and Marketing, Graeme Laurence, said Fish Boys beat more than 500 shops from around the country to be named the grand national winner.

The Competition involved finding the nation’s healthiest, tastiest and crispiest chips.

“Public text voting determined the top 20 shops for each of the Competition’s six regions, and a mystery judging process then whittled those numbers down to a combined total of 76 finalists,” Graeme said.

“From there, the six regional winners and grand national winner were chosen by a panel of judges – it was definitely a closely fought battle.”

Graeme said the judging panel looked at a range of criteria including chip freshness and colour, shop cleanliness and customer service.

“However, a core component of the judging was the fat content of the chips each shop served up. To check this, a chip sample was taken from each shop and sent away for fat analysis at an AgriQuality laboratory.

“This year, we saw an average fat content of 8.2% recorded across all of the samples for the six winning shops. The Chip Group aims for a national average of 9.2%, so we’re thrilled with this year’s result.

“A further outcome of the Competition was the identification of a need to include a boutique chip shop category in future Competitions.”

Fish Boys owner Peter Cleaver said being named the country’s best was recognition of a lot of hard work put into the shop by both him, his family and his staff.

“It’s a fantastic thrill to win, after only having being open for the past two months,” Peter said.

“Keeping our customers happy and utilising the Heart Foundation’s recommended frying techniques is really important to us here at Fish Boys –‘bang, shake and hang’ is drummed into the heads of all of our fryers.

“A big thanks also to all the customers that voted for us.”

The Crisco Oils Best New Zealand Chip Shop Competition 2006 is the country’s only national chip shop competition and was this year supported by Goodman Fielder Commercial, Huhtamaki, Bakels, McCain Foods, Mr Chips, Potato Growers of New Zealand and the Heart Foundation.

As the main sponsor, Goodman Fielder Commercial supported the event under the new Crisco Oils brand.

ENDS

© Scoop Media