Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Sunday gravy sidepiece. Forgotten LA. H. Salt Esq Fish and Chips.

Hey hey everyone.

Hopefully I’m reading this right along with you while safely at home after a return flight from Toronto. If I haven’t already shared highlights of the Canada trip maybe I’ll get to a few in the comments down there.

Since I have been in Canada for most of this past week, I figured we could do a Sunday Gravy quickie today before I get my ass back to doing REAL work next week.

We’re going back for another helping of Forgotten Retro L.A today. Remember when we previously hit up one of the last existing Pioneer Chicken stands a few weeks back?

This is a little something like that. We are going to resurrect an old childhood favorite by once again visiting one of the very last remaining restaurants of its type.

This time?

It’s H. Salt Esquire Fish and Chips motherfuckers!

Give us the goods, Wiki!

“H. Salt Esq. Fish & Chips is a restaurant chain specializing in British-style fish and chips, founded by Haddon Salt in Sausalito, California, in 1965. Salt followed his father and grandfather in becoming a master fish cook and entrepreneur.

Salt’s business was acquired by the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation in 1969. The sale made Salt the third largest stockholder in KFC, at the time the world’s largest fast-food company.

KFC was not successful in the large-scale expansion of the H. Salt Esq. chain and cut its ties to the brand and business in 1987. Each franchisee was allowed to purchase their restaurant. A few independently owned H. Salt Esq. restaurants are still up and running around California.”

I remember this next shit!

Growing up in our podunk tiny ass godforsaken desert town we were way too small to have an H. Salt but when we hit the town by visiting L.A or Riverside County?

Fuck yes. LOVED this shit.

Their situation is very, very much like the situation when we visited Pioneer Chicken. There are just a small number of locations in existence and all of them were franchise stores that had been bought and paid for by the owners.

AND it turns out one of these creaky, crippled unicorns is right up the damn freeway from Pedro.

Shall we?

Time to hit the freeway!

We’ll be taking the 110 North to Carson today. This time I was the pilot and TAJ was on photo/copilot duties.

You can sure tell it’s a Saturday by the traffic volume.

Or more appropriately the “Lack” of traffic volume. This stretch of the 110 is usually user friendly and more of a locals only type stretch. Except for the goddamn trucks. Since we’re right on the Port of LA and across the harbor from the Port of Long Beach, every fucking truck on the planet takes this stretch. California has a traffic law where big rigs are supposed to stay in the 2 right lanes leaving the 3 and 4 lanes for regular traffic.

You know this for a fact on this stretch of freeway because the 2 right hand lanes are beat to fucking SHIT! Same as the 710 freeway which goes straight in and out of the Long Beach harbor on the other side.

Very fortunate today. These moments of freeway zen are rare as fuck so we do appreciate it when they happen.

The South Bay part of LA has this habit of letting you know what cities/towns you are in by placing blatant notice of such information.

Further down the freeway we enter lovely “Carson” California.

Home to the Carson Drive-in and one of the largest Filipino populations in the US. We’ve discussed this place before.

Goddamn those trucks.

Goddamn them to HELL!

Looking at that picture you can tell CalTrans has been busy because this part of the freeway is regularly fully fucking bombed with graffiti.

In fact we’re heading right to the “Carson St” off ramp.

If you have any doubt about what city you’re in just keep looking around.

Well looky here!

Let’s get another sign shot for, uhh, triangulation purposes. Yeah that’s it!

If anyone is reading this outside of California and has never visited LA, please know that what you are seeing with the freeways and the surface streets and the cars and the strip malls, is VERY fucking LA.

To a goddamn T.

How about we get a closer look at that sign?

You can just make out the “Esq” part of H. Salt Esq but more importantly, read what that sign says in the middle.

“Take Home.”

Let’s head inside shall we?

There are probably 3 fucking 2-seater tables in this joint, so the Take Home part is very fucking applicable. We stayed here and ate in because I wanted that shit hot and fresh. Which they very much do. All your shit is made to order, none of that warming lamp shit here.

You got ALL of your basic deep fried fishy deliciousness on one simple menu board.

Blow that up and soak in all of that delicious grease.

Do they do any other type of preparation here besides frying?

See that coffin-sized motherfucker right there? That’s the deep fat fryer. They do NOT have a grill here.

Your ass is getting “fried” and you will like it!

Shit, we should have ordered some egg rolls too. I just saw that.

Let’s see what we did order because, Reader? I ordered a LOT.

How about a little of most everything.

You got your clams and chips.

Those clams were fucking yummy. During early menu perusal on-line there was supposed to be a “Clams only” option, saving your ass from another big paper boat of chips but it wasn’t on the menu.

Sonofabitch that’s a lot of fries.

We also ordered some mandatory hushpuppies.

Oh yeah, some scallops too.

That’s a big fat scallop too.

You want to see that namesake and I understand.

Here you are.

This is the Combo Number 3! With three pieces of fish and 3 jumbo shrimp. Those shrimp were awesome.

For the record they DO have a Combo Number 5 – with 5 fish and 5 shrimp – and you absolutely will get this stuck in your head reading it on the menu board.

Let’s get a look at the interior of the fish to check the doneness.

That’s one good looking piece of fucking fish right there.

This was every bit as delicious as I remember. It was also hot enough to burn the shit off the roof of your mouth.

All of the seafood products were top fucking notch. Each one. Those hush puppies were tasty but they could have used a little more onion for sure.

The biggest weak spots were the tartar sauce and the vinegar. The tartar sauce was basically just mayonnaise and the vinegar tasted watered down.

The big achilles heel though?

Those chips were fucking lousy, and there were so many of them too.

I think it’s been my years of being a weekday vegetarian that have fucked with me too. Because goddamn that was like eating an oil soaked catcher’s mitt.

I guess this means the baller move would be ordering just the seafood then grabbing your fries from a place that actually can make some fucking fries.

It also dearly missed several pints to assist with the washing down part.

All in all it was a lovely return trip down Memory Lane. Sure am glad somebody carries the fishy flame to keep some of these old establishments open.

Now work on your bloody chips!

That’s all I got. We’ll get back to standard formatting next time, promise.

Be well folks and see you in the comment section.

Until next week…