The chips, not the fish, are often what’s off when us Yanks try to do traditional fish-and-chips, says Kristen Caroselli, executive chef at The Poppy & Parliament.
“Because chips are not French fries. They’re different,” Caroselli adds. “The type of potato that is used and has to be a high starch, low sugar potato so you get that nice crunch.”
A deluxe English pub, The Poppy & Parliament’s grown into a downtown Huntsville fixture since opening around five years ago. For a week’s worth of fish and chips, the kitchen goes through 300 to 400 pounds of potatoes and 250 to 400 pounds of fresh, line-caught Atlantic cod.
English style fish and chips from The Poppy & Parliament in Huntsville, Alabama. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)Matt Wake
Poppy & Parliament (address 117 North Side Square) isn’t just doing lots of fish and chips. They do ‘em bloody brilliant.
The closest I’ve been to the U.K. is listening and living to the many English rock bands I love, from Black Sabbath to Yes. But folks who’ve had and love real-deal fish and chips have told me Poppy & Parliament’s are legit.
Authenticity aside, what I can attest to is this is delectable stuff I got rid of like a felon trying to dispose of evidence. The fish … clean, flakey and fresh tasting. The chips … plump and hand-cut. Browned like a ‘90s babe who just stepped out of the tanning bed.
A key factor is Poppy & Parliament cooks the chips and cod each in beef tallow, which ups the savory quotient. Beef tallow is the special magic that made McDonald’s French fries undisputed world-beaters until that mega-burger-chain was pressured into stopping using it around 1990.
House made tartar sauce and mushy peas from The Poppy & Parliament in Huntsville. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)Matt Wake
Parliament & Poppy’s kitchen does everything from scratch, from chipping the potatoes to making the tempura batter to portioning the fish – even to making their own tartar sauce and trad-side mushy-peas. Unlike mass-produced tartar sauce, theirs isn’t goopy or gloppy. It’s viscus and airy. There’s brininess from the capers and pickles in the mix. Really good.
At Poppy & Parliament, they also bring out malt vinegar, the traditional English accompaniment for fish and chips. Caroselli says, “The big starchiness from the chips, the fat that’s on the outside of the tempura, the malt vinegar cuts through all that.” An order of fish and chips arrives at the table wrapped in newspaper, the traditional presentation.
Normally, I view consuming peas as a form of torture. But mushy peas at Poppy & Parliament evoke some earthy, tasty Indian buffet side. They add lima beans to sweet the peas here, and the mint seasoning does its aromatic thing.
As one can tell from all the out of state license plates here lately, Huntsville is a transient city. Many people have and are relocating here for jobs as the city’s grown into Alabama’s most-populous. There’s also a steady stream of business travel here, with the aerospace/tech/defense contractors prominent in Huntsville’s business sector.
The Poppy & Parliament in Huntsville. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)Matt Wake
The Poppy & Parliament has become a local magnet for U.K. expats and travelers, and Anglophiles. No wonder. With the authentic food, plentiful Euro beers on tap, dark and sultry interior, and charming patio with the music of English acts like David Bowie and The Who wafting overhead and an old-school phone booth in one corner, it could serve as a set piece for 2021 London-set film “Last Night in Soho.”
Caroselli is from New York. Growing up in an Italian family where making dinner out of the can wasn’t an option, the first thing you learned how to cook well was red sauce. Wanting a creative career in which she worked with her hands, Caroselli attended college in Vermont where she studied baking pastry making.
Instead of following the herd right into bakery or restaurant work, she did a stint with a USDA test kitchen. “It was in a research facility,” she recalls, “not what you would think the USDA was. It was medical trials. How broccoli affects anti-cancer cells in the body, things like that.”
In Vermont she met her boyfriend, also a chef, who eventually got a job down in Tuscaloosa as the executive chef for the University of Alabama’s powerhouse football team. At just 23, Caroselli got an executive chef job at a local steakhouse in Tuscaloosa. Working at the steakhouse, she met Barry O’ Connor, Michelin-starred chef who was working as a meat-department director with a large food distributor.
“We just clicked,” Caroselli says. “And we ended up chatting for like two hours to the point where I had tickets rolling into the kitchen and I was like, ‘I gotta go!’”
Kristen Caroselli, executive chef at The Poppy & Parliament in Huntsville, Alabama. (Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)Matt Wake
About 45 days later, O’Connor reconnected with and Caroselli on the business-oriented social media platform LinkedIn. He had a new venture going in Huntsville. A native of Ireland, O’Conner was teaming with Barnsley, Yorkshire native Shane Brown to do elevated English pub food at Poppy & Parliament, which started as a bar-focused business called simply The Poppy. Caroselli, whose interests outside work including rock climbing and hiking, jumped at the chance.
Upstairs at Poppy & Parliament, they make their own sausage for the kitchen’s bangers and mash downstairs. The butcher their own cuts of meat upstairs too and P&P’s kitchen has gained a local rep for superlative steaks.
Despite the cool and unique to market concept, winning over Alabamians raised on Southern fried catfish and hushpuppies, not English fish-and-chips and mushy-peas, didn’t happen overnight.
“The food isn’t what you expect from a pub in America,” Caroselli says. “So it took a little while for us to get that across. But once we did the feedback was enormous. But the culture feeds into that. When you walk in, you don’t feel like you’re in Huntsville, Alabama.”
MORE ON HUNTSVILLE CULTURE:
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How to hear a lot of great Huntsville music in less than an hour
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The origins and continuing impact of Huntsville’s signature beer
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