Fryer learning: The Greek Cypriot refugee behind WA’s favourite fish side dish

If you’ve eaten fish and chips in Western Australia over the past three decades, it’s likely that you’ve eaten fries made by Choice Chips.

These fries will likely be the company’s frozen 13-millimetre straight-cut chip: chubby, golden blocks of fried potato with a wicked mix of crunch and fluff.

You may find yourself inhaling them uncontrollably, one chip at a time. You are not alone.

Each week, West Australian fish and chippers across the state fry, salt and wrap their way through some 60 tonnes of Choice Chips’ namesake.

Although the range includes various chip styles including a skin-on “country” style, the aforementioned 13mm chip – this measurement refers to how thick each stick of potato is cut – makes up the majority of these sales.

The chips are produced in Manjimup using local potatoes; get delivered weekly to the company’s warehouse in the Wangara industrial area; and are distributed as far as Exmouth in the north and Bunbury in the south.

In short, founder Michael Xydas’s decision to get into chip production in the early ’90s turned out to be a good one.

“I used to own coffee shops and sold a lot of chips,” says the Greek Cypriot refugee who arrived in Perth in the late 80s and got into hospitality through lunch bars and cafes.

“I met a guy, asked the right questions about making chips and did my homework and thought there was an opportunity here.”

When Xydas joined the chip manufacturing game in 1992, he produced a fresh chip with a cool-room life of five days.

His workforce was three people big and operated out of a smaller facility in Wangara.

Although it was common for fish and chippers to make their own chips, Xydas says his in was being able to offer shop owners pre-blanched, ready-to-cook chips at a cheaper price than what they could buy raw potatoes for. (It also helped that Xydas could purchase Atlantic and Nooksack potatoes – russet potato varieties that produced a crunchy, airy fry that weren’t readily available in the market – at wholesale prices.)

After eight years of cutting chips, Xydas branched out into cutting wrapping paper too, before eventually turning Choice Chips into a one-stop-shop for fish and chip supplies.

According to Xydas, of the 450 fish and chippers operating in WA, more than 300 of them are his customers.

(Xydas also says, interestingly, that’s the state’s fish and chipper population has stayed relatively stable over the past three decades with the steady birth rate of new suburbs helping offset the closure of older businesses.)

Although Choice Chips’ range has grown – chicken nuggets, tomato paste and cheese are among the catalogue’s atypical additions – Xydas says recent fishing bans have had little impact on his market and customers are buying the same – largely overseas – fish as they traditionally have.

New Zealand hake remains popular, although supply is being supplemented by fish from Africa and Namibia.

Demand is also growing for Spanish mackerel, a meaty white fleshed fish.

Like everyone connected with the seafood industry, Xydas is all too aware of the effect of rising prices – “fish and chips used to be one of the most affordable meals,” he laments – yet it’s still very much business as usual for him, his family and his staff.

He’s still in the office from 3.30am most days, getting a start on the day’s deliveries.

The week leading up to Good Friday is, as always, all hands on deck as local fish and chippers make sure they’re prepped for the biggest day of the year.

For those ordering fish and chips this weekend, it’s worth keeping this in mind and cutting your friendly neighbourhood fryer some slack.

Good things take time, whether it’s frying fish to order or slowly building a fish and chip empire.