Culinary explorers discover there's life yet in deep-fried Mars bars
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Version 0 of 1. As you enter Stonehaven from the north, sea on one side and squat, unlovely architecture on the other, a sign welcomes you with: “Home of RW Thomson, inventor of the pneumatic tyre”. There’s no taboo around celebrating their great creations, but the deep-fried Mars bar did not, according to Aberdeenshire council, fall into that category. Invented in 1992 by the fryers of the Carron fish bar, the battered chocolate bar spread so far, both in fact and in lore, that the shop’s sign was put up a few years ago. Last week, Aberdeenshire council ordered its removal on the basis that it lowered the tone. Three days later, after an outcry that had reached from the Bridge of Muchalls (just up the road) to Western Australia, the council backed down. Related: Deep-fried Mars bars are a fine Scottish tradition | Shelagh McKinlay But the damage had been done. On Thursday lunchtime, many people arrived at the shop under the vague but compelling impression that the snack itself was in peril. “Of course leave the sign up!” said Jack Muir, 78. “Everybody should be able to die the way they want. I’m here because I decided, in case it disappeared, this should be something I should experiment with. At 78, you can take a chance.” Some things are so obvious that no description would be complete without them, and yet they must surely have been observed before: the problem with deep frying a Mars bar isn’t the fat or the salt or the sugar, but the colour. It looks like a turd in batter; so much so that there’s some kind of evolutionary wisdom urging you not to eat it. But when you’ve gone all the way there and, at 41, are ready to experiment, you can ignore that wisdom for the first bite, and, it turns out, these are delicious; much better than a regular Mars bar, since the neutral, savoury flour breaks into the sugary flatness, the batter mixes up the texture and, of course, the salt and the caramel meet, in an elegant and self-contained precursor to this decade’s salted caramel obsession. Look, you wouldn’t eat two in a row. You may not eat again that day. But it’s better than the chocolate puds I could name in 10 separate restaurants, which, considering the low quality of the chocolate, is saying a lot. Murray Watson, 25, is the son of the owner, and the manager of the shop: he was only two when the creation was born (the shop was under different ownership then), but is now a serious fryer in his own right. He was Scottish young fish fryer of the year in 2014. While respectful of the bar, Watson was quick to point out it wasn’t the be all and end all for the shop. “People say, ‘you live off the Mars bar’, and it’s not true at all. Eating one, it’s a tale; some people would class it as an adventure. But for us, it’s a £1.50 product and we sell 100, maybe 200 a week. That’s not what’s keeping our business alive.” A sign behind his head reads: “We fry in bronze deodorized beef dripping”, like that’s a good thing. He’s as skinny as a bean. “I eat plenty of chippers, plenty. There’s no point denying it. But it’s up to you how you live your lifestyle.” Mark Stoddart, 37, lives in Edinburgh and works in Aberdeen, and has actually diverted during his lunchtime – a diversion that takes quite a long time, by the way – for a deep-fried Mars bar. “This is the first one I’ve had in quite a few years,” he said cheerfully. “I saw it on the news the other week. I first tried them in Edinburgh, but I figured, where are you going to get a better one than the birthplace?” He bit into it with self-conscious gusto. “It doesn’t disappoint, you know. That is fantastic.” Stonehaven is also famous for its swimming pool, Carol Allen, 61, told me: “It’s seawater and it’s heated, there’s only one in the country like that.” I thought perhaps she was trying to divert the world’s attention away from the Mars bar, but no. “I can’t see people who like the swimming pool minding the sign. How would that bring down the tone?” She’s never had one herself, though. “I don’t like Mars bars and I don’t think I’d like them hot,” she said emphatically. Anne, 38, has never tried one either, but does love a deep-fried pizza. I find that a far weirder proposition; doesn’t the fat break through the batter and saturate the bread, so that it’s like eating a sponge deodorized dripping? “No, no, no. It’s lovely.” On the wall, there’s a framed sheet of A4, giving a history of the snack that reads like something you’d find in a provincial pencil museum. “Ordered by John Twaddle,” it concludes. “Cooked by Evelyn Balgowan. Eaten by Brian McDonald.” No funny business, is the subtext: anyone caught pretending they were the first, who isn’t Brian or, at a pinch, John, will be dealt with swiftly. You can say what you like about the pneumatic tyre; it might be classy, but it doesn’t seem to inspire this possessive pride. |