Like most British “classics,” fish and chips date from the 19th century, when families from the mills of the new industrial age needed ready food that was fast and cheap. The mills are long gone, but 8,500 fish-and-chip shops survive in the U.K., seven for every one McDonald’s. It may be harder to find a chippy in Toronto, but what we lack in quantity we make up for in authenticity.

Penrose Fish and Chips looks much as it must have in 1950, when the Johnston family, still there, first opened the door. They fry halibut only—fresh, Pacific—in variable portions (“I go by feel,” grunts the fry cook) in a famously secret batter. Whatever it is, it does what batter’s supposed to do, safeguarding the fish from the scalding fat, sealing all that moist heat in a crisp but not brittle carapace. Square-cut chips—enough of them to eclipse a nine-inch plate—are prepared in-house from local or P.E.I. spuds. Coleslaw is church basement, tartar sauce in a little plastic packet the one solecism. Wash things down with a Dad’s root beer or Vernors ginger ale. Or, if you’re a purist, a cuppa.

At lunch only, chef Martha Wright’s fish and chips at Starfish reach another plane altogether—nadir or zenith, depending on your commitment to tradition. About six ounces of halibut this time, but the dark crust includes panko crumbs with horseradish, and the chips are chip-chips, like Lay’s, but hand-cut and made on-site (they’ll substitute frites, if you insist). Fresh napa slaw has almost too much crunch. The killer break from tradition is the aïoli for dipping, spiked with a reduction of the stout that Starfish owner Patrick McMurray gets custom-brewed using liquor from Malpeque oysters. Forget the past.