This is a paid guest post from The Onion Knight.

He always wants fish and chips.

By the sea in the scorching summer heat, somehow nothing appeals to him more than a pale and greasy bag of piping-hot beige. So that time, we headed to a promising chippy, painted the obligatory ocean blue and displaying the name of the shop in Comic-Sans-inspired bright yellow letters. Usually a ba-dum-tss-worthy pun pertaining to the marine world – Oh My Cod, most likely, or was it Happy Plaice?

His order is placed, and we sit down at depressingly plastic tables to wait. I stare at the paper napkins – they come directly out of the metal box, like they do in Spain, I reflect, except this is the English seaside on a half-baked sunny day. With no intention of taking that observation anywhere further, my thoughts turn to what’s about to enter, still dripping with bad quality oil, my boyfriend’s stomach.

A caveat: I am not English, but I like England. I would go so far as to say that I enjoy British food. But fish and chips, this is the sole nation favourite that I can’t get my head round. I love a good roast, I actively seek out pie and mash, I’ve gradually come to accept baked beans and I’ve even had a full English breakfast. But fish and chips? That’s a tough one. Even after nine years in this country.

There is nothing in it that I find appealing. Not the taste nor the texture, not the smell, and definitely not the colour. In the worst of cases, oil residue mingles with fish juice at the bottom of the cardboard box, soaking the chips so that they become at once soft and warm on the outside, and still half frozen on the inside. In the corner, there is a small container with a teaspoonful of mushy peas, a random and irrelevant spot of green navigating a sea of stodgy potatoes and brown batter. It makes me enjoy the theatre of making the customer pick a type of fish, as if, once it is encased in its flour coffin and soullessly plunged, multiple times, into a bubbling deep fryer, anyone could spot the difference between skate and cod. They could serve them deep-fried Birds Eye fish fingers, I think pitilessly, for all they know.

The order is ready, and we walk out, him carrying a big plastic bag containing the maximum allowance of single-serve tartar sauces, me with a previously purchased crab sandwich – I came ready. We find a good spot on the pebbled beach and he eagerly opens his meal, smiling at my incredulity.

“It is my madeleine de Proust,” he says defensively – except that it is not the smell of cake that brings him back to his childhood, but the pasty taste of fish which last unfortunate dip was in a toxic mix of dangerously high-temperature grease.

He dives in, a couple of chips first and then straight to the main business, visibly burning the inside of his mouth as he goes but still courageously reaching for the next bite. His fingers get shinier by the second as the oil trickles down, trapping crumbs all along his thumb and index as it goes. Napkins and grease-stained paper are flying everywhere, but he knows what he’s doing, and within ten minutes, the deal is done. The wrapping paper is tightly packed back in the box and he is casually munching on his last remaining chips, having given up on extracting any more sauce from the tiny tartar pouches to dip them into.

In this instant, I think I understand what fish and chips is to him – a highway to school holidays at his Grandma’s house, a sensory flashback as smells, tastes, and possibly even behaviour bring him back immediately to his childhood. Or perhaps it is more like a general feeling of happy nostalgia as he repeats the familiar gestures that gave his ten-year-old self so much pleasure.

Nevertheless, as the beads of summer sweat on his forehead start mixing with food overload-induced perspiration, I can’t help but think that the whole experience looks painful. It is hot and stuffy and the air is heavy. How has this achieved the status of the ultimate British summer food?

Just as I ponder this, he leans back and lets go a long sigh. “Yeah, I didn’t need this,” he says finally. “I feel terrible.”