Pop quiz: what do Bangalow’s You Beauty and Sydney’s Saint Peter and Baba’s Place have in common? Keen-eyed followers of The Good Food Guide may jump in with the fact they were all major award winners in the Guide’s 40th edition (out right now), but there’s something less obvious linking these storied establishments: they all have hot chips on their menu.
High, low, near, far, chips are everywhere. They’re hand-cut and plated with dry-aged tuna in Paddington, piled high to drag through toum in Marrickville, sprinkled with Aleppo pepper in Bangalow. With such a rampant appetite for fried potatoes – Australians consume more than 19 kilograms of frozen potatoes annually, most of them chips – it was only a matter of time before someone opened a place that gave the people what they so clearly, desperately want: hot chips, all day every day.
This place is Noosa’s hyped (8 Hastings Street, Noosa Heads). Since launching in April, the Hastings Street shopfront has drawn queues and spawned videos attracting millions of views on Instagram and TikTok. The reason? An innovative setup that takes the self-serve aspect of frozen yoghurt-sensation Yo-Chi and applies it to fried potatoes.
First up, you’ll be faced with three different chip dispensers. This is where the fun begins, says co-founder Rhi Pearce. “Each dispenser has a different type of chip in it. We’ve got a classic crispy chip, sweet potato fries and then a hand-cut English sort-of chip-shop chip. You choose which one you want, grab a carton, put it in the dispenser, pull the lever and fresh chips straight from the kitchen will come into your tub.
You then head to the toppings counter and top it with whatever you want before heading to the weigh station where you pay.”
Pearce, along with locals Ysabella Buckley-Tyree, Josh Leach and Lisa Tyree, invested in custom machinery and spent countless hours perfecting the washing, peeling, cutting, rinsing, blanching and frying processes to land on what they consider to be the perfect chip, crisp on the outside, fluffy in the centre. A tub is $7 per 150 grams, a price that takes into account all the wild customisation their customers (many of them kids on holidays) can dream up.
That could mean a shake of chicken salt, paprika or nanami togarashi combined with a squeeze of tomato sauce, aioli or ranch dressing. Or it might mean a ladle of gravy, queso or curry sauce combined with toppings ranging from pulled beef or pork to chicken tenders, cauliflower poppers, guacamole and pico de gallo.
“There’s been all sorts of weird and wonderful creations, and sometimes just chips or just toppings,” says Pearce. “But that was what we wanted, especially when thinking about families – for them to be able to go in and the parents make a Mexican bowl and keep it super healthy for themselves, and then the kids could indulge.”
My topping trick? Think about your tub in sections, then layer complementary flavours into each: katsu curry sauce and pickled ginger in one corner, pulled beef, birria sauce and guacamole in another, chicken salt and gravy in the middle. Then pick up a couple of forks and have at it.
Conversations about more Chip’n’Mix locations are already underway, and judging by the response, there’s nothing to say it won’t go national. “We want to do at least two more in the next 12 months,” says Pearce. “Chips are already such a loved side dish, but Chip ‘n’ Mix really makes it the main meal. For us, the question is really, how can we bring that to as many places as possible?”
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