Restaurants

Penrose Fish & Chips

600 Mt Pleasant Rd.
Phone: 416.483.6800

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Rating: 2.9/5 (10 votes cast)

Fish & chips at Penrose
So what if it's deep-fried and bad for you? It's hard to care when you're diving into a big plate o' fish and chips at Penrose's (Mt. Pleasant, south of Eglinton), one of the oldest fish & chip shops in Toronto.

Jeff and I are not the only ones in search of artery-clogging goodness; inevitably there's a line-up whenever we visit. If we want our fish & chips to go, they'll sprinkle it with malt vinegar and salt then wrap it up in newspaper, just like the old British custom.

Or you can eat inside. I love the Stuff-On-The-Walls diner style interior with old menus, signs, photographs from old Toronto, and (of course) a fish:

Penrose swordfish
You can get halibut & chips for $8.80 or haddock & chips for $7.00. Halibut only: $5.80, haddock only: $5.00, chips: $3.00. A bowl of Penrose's chunky homemade Maritime chowder is $4.50. I'm not a big coleslaw fan but I order it anyway ($1.00) just to see a bit of green on the table.

Boylans cream soda
I usually order the halibut. The combination of the crunchy golden coating and moist halibut meat inside is irresistable. The servings are smaller than the ones at Chippy's but that's better for me, right?

In addition to a wide range of regular soft drinks, Penrose also carries some other interesting beverages including Boylans "Old-Fashioned Pops" for $1.75 each: orange cream, black cherry, birch beer, old-fashioned orange and cream soda.

If you've still got room afterward, you can order a slice of pie for $2.25 ($3.25 a la mode); they have apple, strawberry/rhubarb, blueberry, pecan and sometimes pumpkin, depending on the season. On Fridays, you can get lemon meringue pie for $3.50, made by 86-year-old matriarch Marion Johnston; she's usually behind the counter as well. Apparently she's been making the pie every weekend for nearly 60 years (!). How cool is that?

A side note for those Barbara Streisand fans out there: Penrose is one of the diva's favourite Toronto take-out places.

Mmm, just writing this post makes me want more fish & chips. Maybe it's time someone did a taste comparison of Penrose's fish & chips to the ones at Chippy's or Harbord Fish & Chips.

In the name of culinary science, of course.

Anyway, make sure you get to Penrose early for dinner; it closes at 7 pm (6:30 on Saturdays).

Penrose apple pie
Frying hours: Tue-Fri 11a-7p, Sat 11-6:30p, closed Sun and Mon.

20080124_penrose.jpg

Reader Reviews and Comments

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CTV has a video about the place here:
http://toronto.ctv.ca/tl/static/mytoronto.html

Posted by: Christine Bentley at November 19, 2007 7:13 PM

Thanks, Christine!

To others looking for the video: the title of the video is "Fish & Chips" (searching for the text "Penrose" won't help).

Posted by: Debbie Ohi at November 19, 2007 9:36 PM

Been going to Penrose for years, a little less often of late, and when I read your review I thought you were nucking futs, The Penrose serves only Halibut, went today for lunch and sure enough they've added Haddock to the menu.

Posted by: Chester Pape at December 2, 2007 2:03 AM

After seeing Ken Shaw advertise this This fish and chips place on a comercial for my Toronto on CTV News. There was no name mentioned but i was determined to find it being a fish and chips lover to see if they was as good as they claimed.

And you know what, They were better in fact they were the best damm fish and chips i ever tasted and i will tell every one i know about them.

Thanks to Ken Shaw and Christine Bentley of CTV News for bringing Penrose Fish and Chips our lives

Posted by: Helen & Glenn Dodd at January 12, 2008 5:22 PM

My school's just down the street from Penrose. My friends and I try to "penroe" it a couple times a month

we love it there

Posted by: Sonia at February 22, 2008 9:20 AM

I will go try this place, but an establishment to my family for Fish and Chips has been Duckworths on Kingston Road. There is another on the Danforth but I'm not sure if its the same family. Alternatively, if your north, they recently opened in Orilla.

Posted by: mani at April 15, 2008 1:49 PM

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