The Anchor Fish & Chips is the only traditional British chippy in Minneapolis licensed to serve alcohol — which means you can have a pint of something cold while you wait for your cod to come out of the fryer. That detail sounds minor until you’re actually sitting there on a Wednesday night, rain tapping the windows on 13th Avenue NE, and it feels exactly right.
The restaurant occupies a small, no-frills space in Northeast Minneapolis, the kind of room that doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is: wooden booths, a chalkboard menu, British football scarves tacked to the walls, and the persistent, comforting smell of hot oil and malt vinegar. If you go on a Friday or Saturday, expect a wait — the place seats maybe forty people and doesn’t take reservations. A rainy Tuesday, though, and you can usually walk right in.
The menu is short by design. You’re here for the fish and chips, which arrive in a paper-lined basket: thick-cut fries and a piece of cod or haddock battered to order. The batter is the thing — light but substantial, not greasy, crackling when you break through it. The fish inside stays moist in a way that reheated fish never does, so it’s worth showing up hungry and eating it while it’s hot. A standard order of fish and chips runs around $14–$16 depending on your choice of fish, which is reasonable for the portion and the quality.
Beyond the flagship, there are a few British staples rotating through: mushy peas, coleslaw, a scotch egg when they have it. The curry sauce — a British chippy classic — is worth ordering for dipping even if the concept sounds strange at first. There’s also a short list of UK-import sodas and, of course, beer on tap. The Boddingtons is the obvious choice if you want to commit to the theme.
What makes The Anchor work as a night-out destination rather than just a quick dinner is the atmosphere it manages to sustain despite the casual setup. There’s no ambient playlist or carefully curated lighting — just people actually talking to each other across the table, the bar filling up gradually after 8 p.m., and a staff that seems genuinely unbothered by whether you linger. It has the feel of a neighborhood bar that also happens to make excellent fried fish, which, in Minneapolis, is a rarer combination than you’d think.
You should know: they close early by bar standards, typically around 10 p.m. on weekdays, so this isn’t a late-night destination in the strictest sense. But it’s ideal for that in-between hour — too late to call it dinner, too early to call it a night — when you want something warm and specific and a little bit different from the usual Northeast options. Parking on the surrounding blocks is generally easy. The walk from the 90 bus stop on Central Avenue is about five minutes.
If you go once, you’ll probably start counting it among your regulars. It’s the kind of place that rewards the decision to return.
