The AnstrutherFish Bar

The chippy on Anstruther's harbour is famous well beyond Fife, and the awards back the reputation: UK Fish and Chip Shop of the Year in 2009 — beating around a thousand rivals — the first British chip shop to earn Marine Stewardship Council certification the same year, four-times Scotland's best, and a Les Routiers café of the year before that. Robert and Alison Smith have run it since 2003 through their family firm Argo Fish; the Smiths have fished the East Neuk since the sixteen-hundreds, which is the kind of provenance no marketing can manufacture. Eaten on the harbour wall watching the boats, with the Isle of May offshore, it is one of Scotland's essential cheap meals — and the queue down Shore Street is the standing proof.