When it comes to the classic British dish of fish and chips, one name that stands out in Scarborough is Sea Witch Fish and Chips. Located in the heart of this coastal town, Sea Witch has been serving up delicious, high-quality fish and chips for over 50 years. What sets Sea Witch apart is its commitment to using only the freshest ingredients. The fish is sourced from local fishermen, ensuring that it is always of the highest quality and caught sustainably. Each fillet is then hand-battered and cooked to order, resulting in a crispy golden coating that perfectly complements the tender flaky fish inside. But it's not just the fish that makes Sea Witch a popular choice among locals and tourists alike.

Sea Witch Fish & Chips, St. Clair West

No kidding, Fish & Chips is a true art! Sea Witch Fish & Chips opened its doors on St. Clair West in mid 2014, invisioning to become the top-of-the-mind spot for the occasional fish-and-chips cravings! Since then, this cozy spot has developed it’s dedicated regulars for a very special reason, it’s incredibly crispy and golden batter… this spot made “Top New Restaurants of 2014” for a mighty reason! Sea Witch Fish & Chips offers five varieties of fish : Arctic Char, Atlantic Haddock, Pickerel, Pacific Halibut & Pacific Cod . Along with these tasty varieties of fish, SWF&C also has special sides – including, a Halibut Poutine ! Now, that, I’m curious of. Fish & Chip prices start at $11 – and $6 for the kids! You better bet Sea Witch is kid-friendly .

Take away ready to wrap and go!

Ah, The Witch’s Brew, very well named. This house chowder is filled with the house’s fish favourites: Pickerel and Halibut! A dash of pepper is all that is required to elevate the flavours into my (new) favourite chowder, ever! Along with the soft and delicious pieces of fish, there are potatoes, onions and carrots. So simply and heavily flavoursome, I enjoyed it!

Sea Witch has a one of a kind batter, one of which they have contributed a tremendous amount of time and labour into perfecting. It only takes three mere ingredients! The flavours were heavy in beef talon and held a heavy crunch! In all – I can compare it’s elasticity and savoury texture to that of a Chinese Doughnut.

We have the Onion Rings, so beautifully presented! There is a heavy amount of batter enveloping it. With each bite, you’ll have a mouthful of oily batter and a mere sliver of onion. A definite treat, but it is a definite must-try at a price of $5!

Next up is the Halibut Cake! The first ever Fish Cake I’ve seen that has been made up of Halibut! And it really worked well! It was all complimented incredibly with a pickled vegetables that I can’t quite put my finger on yet. I finished the whole saucer of it.

The Slaw that SWF&C serves up is extraordinarily well balanced . I love a good slaw to cut through the oils of fish and chips, this was the holy grail that glided me through the dishes. The slaw is simply created with cabbage and parsley , the parsley in the mix lifted the whole dish, making it a must-order with your Fish & Chips!

Pacific Halibut Fish & Chips, $15

Ah, and what we’ve all been preparing for… The plate that Sea Witch would like you to run back for: Fish and Chips! The fries were absolutely heavenly, gosh. Each uniformly cut in-house, and fried in a good ol’ Talon Beef Oil. It was heavily crispy, and the bite was as though you were biting into a mash. It was perfect. Easily making the list of one of the best fries that I’ve ever devoured! The fish on the other hand, as beautifully thick and coloured as it appeared – the batter was all that I found myself cutting through. I found a mere Halibut less than a centimetre thick beneath the heavy batter. This dish was easily saved in the beauty of the fries and zesty, creamy and chunky Tartare sauce. You’ve done it right, Sea Witch!

Sea Witch Fish & Chips and Farmer’s Daughter: The right way and wrong way to draw inspiration for a new restaurant

This article was published more than 9 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

The fish at the Sea Witch is fried in beef drippings and comes out of the oil richly golden, but blistered in places to the colour of stout. The cod and pickerel are the standout options. Danielle Matar/The Globe and Mail

Sea Witch Fish & Chips (A Cheap Eats pick, where you can dine well for under $30, before alcohol, tax and tip): 636 St. Clair Ave. W (at Wychwood Avenue), 647-349-4824, seawitchfc.com

Farmer's Daughter (no stars, not recommended): 1588 Dupont St. (at Franklin Avenue), 416-546-0626, farmhousehospitality.tumblr.com

If you haven't taken the opportunity at any point over the past 64 years to stop in at Penrose Fish & Chips, on Mount Pleasant Road, you've still got a week to do it. Penrose opened in 1950, and for as long as I've lived in the city it's been the only fish and chips shop worth eating at. The tiny, grease-stained haunt has never given in to nutritional fads – they still fry their battered cod and halibut fillets in boiling beef dripping, so the fish comes out deep brown and crusty and the crust tastes dark and gorgeous and substantial and the fish sealed inside is juicy and flaky, the way fried fish might have tasted in Manchester, say, in the 1930s. Complain all you want about life in the coal mines. It can't possibly have been that bad.

Penrose was packed with moist-eyed regulars when I went there at lunch last week; the family behind the business is retiring on Oct. 10. But should you miss this opportunity, there's a new spot on St. Clair West that is very much like Penrose. Kevin Kowalczyk, who co-owns The Sea Witch with his wife Jacki Strahl, spent 11 years as Penrose's manager before leaving in January. He fries his fish – Pacific cod and halibut, haddock, char and pickerel – in beef drippings and cuts his chips fresh from whole local potatoes every day. He's built an old-time neighbourhood fish and chips shop that happens to be comfortable and family-friendly. "We're never going to do fish tacos," he told me on the phone this week. I would have hugged him if I could.

The Sea Witch's battered fish comes out of the oil puffed and sizzling, richly golden mostly, but blistered in places to the colour of stout. The crust is gloriously crunchy and just the right level of greasy, seasoned perfectly. Thankfully, the fish inside – the cod and pickerel in particular – is also exquisite.

The chips are thickly cut, skin-on, creamy-centred, excellent. Notwithstanding Penrose, I haven't found another city fish and chips shop even half this good.

The Sea Witch's tartar sauce, made from mayo, gherkins, capers and lemon juice, is good enough. The coleslaw is also fine, if ever-changing. It had the tang and texture of sauerkraut the first time I tried it; the next time it was more restrained.

There are halibut cakes and poutine available (my kid loved the poutine; I thought the gravy tasted canned). There is cheesecake for dessert, or vanilla ice cream with sprinkles for the children. If you order halibut cakes or cheesecake at a fish and chips shop, you get what you deserve.

The fried fish at Farmer's Daughter, a five-month old offshoot of Dupont Avenue's popular Farmhouse Tavern, is served with less of an eye to tradition. Chef Léonie Lilla, who was born and raised in Switzerland and spent a year on the line at Momofuku Daisho, piles a battered haddock fillet on a beef patty, sandwiching them with tartar sauce, pickles and coleslaw into a glossy, salt-flecked pretzel bun. On good nights, that burger is juicy, creamy, crunchy and messy – easily the restaurant's most successful offering. If that sounds a little bit like faint praise, well, it is.

As at its paterfarmilias up the street, the new spot has a cheap and casual feel, meant to appeal to all-comers in a begrudgingly gentrifying neighbourhood. One of Farmer's Daughter's appetizers is served in a dented metal kitchen bowl. They're different here – they fly the idiosyncratic flag proudly. But you've got to have a couple of other things in place before idiosyncrasy has any chance at charming customers. A comfortable room and consistently well-made food would be a start.

Farmhouse Tavern has imparted none of its antique wood warmth or nick-nacky charm on Farmer's Daughter. The little space is done in cheap-looking subway tiles and white-painted drywall, with too-bright lights overhead and a powerful neon wall sign that casts a cold blue glare around the room. It's all about as cozy as a proctologist's office.

Farmer's Daughter doesn't do paper menus or printed wine lists. If you'd like to see a wine list, you'll have to get up and walk over to the bar at the front, where it's scrawled in teal marker on an enormous dry-erase board – too-short-to-be-helpful descriptions ("Niagara Red $10/$45") and arrows pointing at bottles with labels that are too far away to read. This is just barely cute the first time you have to walk over, absurd when your dinner's in front of you and you'd like another glass.

The food menu is also unintelligible. The dish names are deliberately cryptic – one or two words only, rendered in small, white plastic peg letters way at the back of the room, on one of those peg boards that went out of fashion with lawn darts and thalidomide. The letters are arranged in a random mix of large and drop caps, with dollar signs standing in for S's and an upside-down 3 in one case for an E. That menu looks like a ransom note, except most ransom notes don't require a four-minute soliloquy from your server before they make any sense.

To be sure, none of this is Ms. Lilla's fault; the front-of-house is owner Darcy MacDonell's jam. I'd like to see Ms. Lilla in a restaurant where the atmosphere and service don't so handily undermine her efforts. Nonetheless her cooking, larded with modernist flourishes – with frozen yogurt spheres, dehydrated powders, balsamic soils, herb sorbets and something a server called "pancetta glue" – fails too often on fundamentals.

Early this summer, one dish included house-made mozzarella. It had the texture of mass-manufactured pizza cheese. The octopus dish came dressed with sunchoke puréeand sunchoke chips, mussels, a sausagey thing made with that pancetta glue, a swoosh of squid ink, herbs … it had been massively oversalted.

And whatever in-the-trenches-with-the-kitchen effect the restaurant hopes to achieve by serving "Staff $nack" in a metal prep bowl is quickly ruined when you realize the staff snack is a roasted marrow bone. It's nicely cooked, but the bone is too long for the bowl, so it's balanced against the rim; good luck trying to spoon out the fat without tipping it all on the table.

There's a "seasonal twinkie" for dessert, with rhubarb and elderflower the last time I had it. It tasted exactly like a Twinkie-twinkie, but with a fruity top-note instead of the usual high-summer-in-Chemical-Valley tang.

There was also a gluten-free ice cream sandwich. The ice cream part was pretty good. The sandwich part was thick and dry and tough as chipboard. Later that night, once my gums had started healing, I wondered how you'd write that on a proper menu, then realized it's better that they don't.

Sea Witch Fish & Chips

Atmosphere: A family-friendly, old-time chip shop, where the takeout comes swaddled in newsprint and a portrait of the famed fictional mariner Steve Zissou hangs proudly on the wall. Service can be harried.

Wine and drinks: Boylan's sodas, excellent ginger beer and the usual soft drinks.

Best bets: Fish and Chips. The cod and pickerel are standouts.

Prices: One piece from $10 (cod) to $14 (halibut). Coleslaw is extra.

NB: No liquor licence, no reservations.

Farmer's Daughter

Atmosphere: If someone converted a Baskin-Robbins into a neighbourhood restaurant on the super-cheap. Hard-working service.

Wine and drinks: You'll have to get up and take a look.

Best bets: The burger, the "seasonal twinkie."

Prices: Starters, $9 to $12; mains $17 to $21.

No stars: Not recommended.

* Good, but won't blow a lot of people's minds.

** Very good, with some standout qualities.

*** Excellent, well above average with few caveats, if any.

**** Extraordinary, memorable, original with near-perfect execution.

Episode 23 – Sea Witch Fish & Chips

Sea Witch Fish & Chips is a fish & chips shop located at 636 St. Clair Ave. West (St. Clair & Wychwood — between Christie and Bathurst). It opened on August 5, 2014 in Hillcrest Village. It was suggested to me by NEWSTALK 1010’s Live Drive Producer Melissa Schultz. Thanks Melissa!

But it's not just the fish that makes Sea Witch a popular choice among locals and tourists alike. The chips are also a standout feature of their menu. Made from locally sourced potatoes, each chip is carefully cut and double-fried to achieve that perfect combination of a fluffy interior and a crisp exterior.

The Décor

I think the place has a wonderful decor. It feels modern with a retro-chic style. I love that their hours have Monday as “FISHING” instead of closed. The fonts used on their logos and signs are all great. The interior is clean and comfy, with a few pews rescued from a local church, and counter-style seating at the front. It probably seats about 25-30. There are some neat things inside, like the wooden speakers and lights that make it look a little like the inside of a boat/ship! I have to say, it was neat to see co-owner Kevin Kowalczyk (he owns it with his wife, Jacki Strahl) a Jays cap, in full support of the team. In fact, looking at an article from last year, he was also wearing the cap in 2014, so he’s clearly not a bandwagoner (unlike me)!

Sea Witch also offers a range of additional menu options to suit different tastes and dietary requirements. From classic British favorites like pie and mash to vegetarian and gluten-free options, there is something for everyone at Sea Witch. To complement their delicious food, Sea Witch also provides a warm and welcoming atmosphere. The restaurant's nautical-themed decor and friendly staff create a relaxed and enjoyable dining experience for all customers. Whether you're looking for a quick bite to eat or a leisurely meal by the seaside, Sea Witch Fish and Chips is a must-visit destination. With its commitment to quality ingredients, delicious menu, and friendly atmosphere, it's no wonder that Sea Witch has become a Scarborough institution over the years. So next time you find yourself in this coastal town, be sure to stop by Sea Witch for a taste of the best fish and chips around..

Reviews for "Delighting Tastebuds with Sea Witch Fish and Chips"

- John - 2 stars - I was really excited to try out Sea Witch Fish and Chips after all the hype, but I was left disappointed. The fish was overly greasy and lacked any flavor. The chips were also a major letdown – they were soggy and undercooked. The tartar sauce offered no relief either, as it was bland and tasteless. Overall, I would not recommend Sea Witch Fish and Chips to anyone in search of a quality fish and chips experience.

- Sarah - 1 star - I had high expectations for the Sea Witch Fish and Chips, but they completely missed the mark. The fish was dry and tasteless, and the batter lacked any crispiness. The chips were also undercooked and lacked any seasoning. The portion sizes were small for the price, making it a poor value for money. I was extremely disappointed with my experience and will not be returning.

- Mike - 2 stars - I had heard great things about Sea Witch Fish and Chips, but my visit was thoroughly underwhelming. The fish was overcooked and had a rubbery texture. The chips were lukewarm and lacked any flavor. Service was also slow, and the restaurant was quite crowded and noisy. Overall, I was not impressed with Sea Witch Fish and Chips and would not recommend it to others.

- Emily - 3 stars - I had mixed feelings about Sea Witch Fish and Chips. While the fish was cooked well and had a nice crispy batter, I found it to be a bit bland in terms of flavor. The chips were decent, but nothing extraordinary. The portion sizes were also on the smaller side, and I left feeling unsatisfied. Although it wasn't terrible, I don't think Sea Witch Fish and Chips lived up to the hype.

The Evolution of Sea Witch Fish and Chips