Fish and Chips Update

Thanks for all the good advice about places to try fish and chips.  Today, on a lark, I tried the Oaks Bottom Public House which is a part of the New Old Lompoc empire.  Good thing too, the fish was perfect: light crispy batter and juicy steaming fish inside.  I was the only person at that time ordering food, so my order came right away and it was clearly the only thing the kitchen had going on, so it is possible that the quality will decline with a busy kitchen, but this time at least it was done perfectly.  The chips were good as well, however they were seasoned with paprika, I think, or perhaps cayenne pepper, so that was a bit weird and took away from the fish a bit, but I grew to like them.  Presumably all of the Lompoc locations offer the dish, so it is worth a try in my opinion. 

In my F&C post, commenter Mick points me to this outfit:

Go to "The Fish and Chip Shop" 1218 N. Killingsworth St. www.thefishandchipshop.com and your search will be over.

I had just read about this place in Portland Monthly Magazine and I had it in mind for today, but sick kiddies kept me close to home.  So I will get there soon and report.  

The Oaks Bottom, to their great credit, has kept a few rotating taps and today they had the Russian River 'Damnation' on tap.  This belgian style ale has received a lot of attention but I found it strange and antiseptic, so I went for the Diamond Knot 'Industrial IPA' which was pretty good and yet another hugely hopped beer of the type that I keep running into (and good for post tax prep cleansing).  

The Oaks Bottom also played a steady stream of late eighties pop/rick and, perhaps depressingly, I found I knew every word to every song.