Hip Chips is a specialist crisp restaurant in Old Compton Street, Soho; no, it is stupider than that. It is a specialist posh crisp restaurant and it is a grave disappointment to the compulsive overeater. The Bacon Nik Nak Shack would surely be a better idea because crisps, like leisure wear and coaches, can never really be posh. They should not even, ideally, be fresh; the joy in eating a packet of Pickled Onion Monster Munch is in the mingling of the Monster Munch and your own blood as the skin on the roof of your mouth melts off, and there it is. But these are details: who am I to stand against the tide?
Even so, the success of the Cereal Killer Café in Brick Lane shows exactly how much infantile adults will pay to have their infantilism sanctioned by consumer capitalism. They will pay a lot. The pop-up Cadbury’s Creme Egg restaurant of 2015 was more difficult to get into than Le Gavroche, so I gave up and ate a Cadbury’s Creme Egg instead, which was the whole point.
This is a diner with Hip Chips written in monochrome capital letters on the frontage, down the road from the excellent Herman ze German, whose monomaniacal obsession with hotdogs seems quite reasonable from the vantage of Hip Chips.
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