John Dorys

Yes, ANOTHER chippy review. Let’s just say I’m having one of those weeks… So I called in for a lunchtime bite.
If you are having one of those weeks too, why not make your way to the nearest John Dorys.
Put simply John Dorys does the chip shop experience right. From the clear concise menu, which displays meal deals that are well targeted at its audience (check out the lunchtime deals) to the facility to take card payments (yes, card payments! It is bloody 2015 after all).
Another great point is the posters displaying their commitment to reduce the over farming of Cod in the North Sea, and a nice catch of the day chalk board which is a hark back to the times of chip shops of old.
Friendly staff accompany the nice décor which help to give the impression that the food is being prepared in a clean and professional manner. It’s not a shock that this chippy is part of a franchise, which has branches across Belfast.
So when you are in need of fulfilling that voice calling for deep fried seafood, you can be confident that this place will hit the spot. However when it comes to addressing that ‘Chippy at lunchtime’ remorse, you’re on your own.

unhealthy but tasty. Some good deals too. Food is fresh and the service is efficient.

I love John Dory’s! One of the best ‘chippy’s’ around in my opinion. A few things to note about John Dory’s on the Ballygowan Road is that you can order ahead, this comes in handy as at lunchtime it can get really busy and there isn’t much room to wait inside the shop. They also offer a Gluten Free Menu, yeah you heard me right, A Fish and Chip shop with a Gluten Free Menu. Who’d have thought?!
It’s had a few bad reviews in the past but it doesn’t pretend to be fine cuisine and if you treat it like a good old-​fashioned traditional fish and chip shop you won’t be disappointed. Their fish is locally sourced so they garnantee freshness.
Portions are huge; you’ll struggle to finish a £6.45 cod supper. Parking isn’t great at the Ballygowan branch and you’ll have to master a 42 point turn if you want to get out of the tiny parking spaces but trust me your meal will be worth it.

Food isn’t great. There’s much better places to eat nearby.

I’m writing this a year after visiting the place and I only ordered one thing on the menu, so really, I don’t know if I was just unlucky or what, or if things have improved in the last year. But anyway, it was a rainy godawful tuesday night in February 2010. To set the scene a bit, I was in a really bad, snot-​ridden emotional place. Winter, bad bout of flu, recent break-​up, family probs, oh the absolute works. I was in sore need of comfort food. I needed my head aired so just went out aimlessly driving at about 9pm and then called into M&S Forestside for a tub of their extremely chocolately mini-​bites. Yep. If you’ve tried these, no explanation is necessary, if you haven’t, well they’re comfort eating personified. Thick, thick Belgian chocolate that cracks under your teeth giving way to a soft sponge roll packed with the richest chocolate buttercream… they’re bloody lethal and at that time in my life I needed them, did I ever!
Anyway, armed with bites but wanting something savoury first I debated my options. M&S were all out of sushi at closing time, and anyway, sushi although delicious just seemed too damn healthy to fill that gaping hole that demanded junky sustenance. Then I remembered reading about an award-​winning chippy called John Dory’s that had made the best fish and chips shop list in the UK a while back. Recalled that it was a bit past Newtownbreda just along the Ballygowan Road at the junction. So I sped up there and parked in the wee car park and sat miserably watching the drizzling rain, angsting over my problems, and idly stroking my tub of mini-​bites. Opposite there was a Domino’s Pizza with a giant queue outside the door, even in the rain. Curious, I thought. I’ve still never tried Domino’s, but later found out it was their two-​for-​tuesday offer bringing in the punters. Must give it a whirl sometime, but I confess I’m more a fish and chips kinda girl.
Anyway, I girded my rain-​dodging loins and dashed into John Dory’s. It was empty, nobody there, nobody ordering. Old order dockets littering the floor, low lighting, an air of sort of disused melancholy… or maybe that was just my mood at the time reflecting off it. I decided to get scampi, salad and chips. I love scampi and badly needed a treat. I was hoping for greatness. To be fair, I was served by a really nice chap who seemed a bit sheepish about taking my money — maybe he knew how bad the scampi was, but he threw in some little sachets of red sauce for free. Yeah, only 20p each usually, but when you’re down it’s little gestures that tweak you. I appreciated it. I can’t remember what the scampi cost exactly but I think it was a pretty average price. I took my box out to the car and sniffed the air in anticipation. Smelled pretty good and I laid out the serviette over my knees and looked around to make sure I wasn’t being too closely observed doing the creepy lone munching-​in-​my-​car routine. But everybody was over at Domino’s, so I opened my box.
I tried a chip, the much lauded John Dory chip which I’d heard raved about. Not bad at all, better than a lot of chips I’ve had, nicely crisp and well cooked. The side salad was okay, just standard lettuce, tomato and a bit of cheese I think, but seemed fresh. But the scampi… oh dear. Oh. Dear. Must have been cooked at least 3 times. I think I heard a tooth crack when I attempted the first bit. I prefer breaded scampi to battered, when they get it right it’s gorgeous, but when breaded scampi is done badly it’s a dried-​out disaster, and this was a definite disaster. A really thick layer of positively nuked breadcrumbs concealing a tiny little defeated prawn in the middle. I gave up trying to chew and just ripped off the coating and tried to pluck out the prawns. To make matters worse, I found something that definitely wasn’t a prawn in the middle of one, it was like a fossilised bit of fish, maybe an old fish bite that they’d trawled out of the bottom of the frier. The scampi portion was very small, blessedly small as it turned out. All in all, it was thoroughly depressing.
I could’ve done with a good comfort feed that night, I really could, but I didn’t get it. Pleasant service, yes, decent chips, yes, but totally lousy scampi. I know that scampi perhaps isn’t the greatest barometer of a chippy’s quality — so few seem to get it right — so maybe their fish is better, but as this experience was so bad, I never went back to give them another try. My abiding memory of John Dory’s is of depression, drizzle and dried-​out dross. Pity.

I went to this chippy after a long day at university with high expectations. The chip shop is award winning, and after I handed in an assignment that was hardly of an award winning standard, I was in the mood for some grease to help make the world right again! Unfortunately I wasleft rather disappointed by this chip shop.
It wasn’t like I had went for an obscure item on the menu, all I wanted was some fish and chips! For start, the chips in this place are mediocre in the extreme. They weren’t well cooked or crispy or anything, they were just lightly fried and were quite hard when I arrived home to eat them. The fish was a bit better, but agin was unspectacular, with the batter soggy and the portion not overly large.
I haven’t tried anthing else from here as I was put off by my rubbish chips on my first visit, so I can’t really comment on them, but in my opinion there are a lot of better chip shops than this around, and I would advice that people head elsewhere for good fish and chips!