Chinese or Chippie Tea? The UK's Favourite Takeaways Revealed

The UK's top five takeaway cuisines according to search

1. Fish and chips - 40%
2. Chinese - 33%
3. Indian - 18%
4. Pizza - 3%
5. Thai - 2%

We also broke down the data by city, to see if there was a regional divide in the nation’s takeaway of choice. It turns out that the nation is mostly united by their love for a chippie tea, with very few exceptions.

Surprisingly, Birmingham was the only city in our study for which pizza was the top takeaway of choice, with 9,900 Brummies searching for ‘pizza takeaway near me’ every month.

Meanwhile, Stoke-on-Trent residents (880 searches) would take a chow mein over chips any day. Glasgow (3600), Leicester (1900), Coventry (1600) and Cardiff (880) would also rather tuck into a tikka masala.

Newcastle was found to be the most indecisive city of the bunch, with their top cuisines split between Indian, Chinese, and Fish and Chips with 1600 searches each– well, who doesn’t like choice?

What's your city's favourite takeaway according to search?

 To show the regional divides in takeaway favourites, we created a map turning the UK into food, to illustrate the most popular cuisines in various major cities and towns varies.

Can’t spot your city on the map? Check out the table below to see which takeaway cuisine your city has crowned their favourite:

The UK's top chippie orders

Having discovered the UK’s overwhelming love for fish and chips, we asked 2,000 UK adults what they’d typically order from a chippie to find the nation’s most loved menu item.

Battered cod is the nation’s top-tier ‘chippie’ order by a mile, with six out of ten choosing this as their typical order. Battered haddock comes a close second with 33% of the vote. However, in Scotland, haddock is the fish of choice by far, with over half (51%) of Scots choosing this as their typical order over a third (35%) preferring cod.

A quarter (26%) of UK adults are fiends for a battered sausage, and a fifth (20%) opt to keep it simple and would prefer a batter-free sausage instead. Coming up in ‘mid tier’ chippie orders is a fish cake (15%), doner kebab (14%), and the Wigan classic, steak pie (13%).

It seems there are a few chippie dishes that most UK adults wouldn’t come near with a barge pole. Lancashire delicacy, the ‘pie sandwich’ locally known as a ‘Wigan kebab’ comes in last with a mere 1% of the vote. Whilst the Scottish culinary icon, the deep-fried Mars Bar, gained only 2% of the vote. Deep-fried pizza was similarly shunned with just 4% choosing this as their chippie item of choice.

The UK's top ten fish and chip shop orders:

1. Battered cod - 60%
2. Battered haddock - 33%
3. Battered sausage - 26%
4. Sausage - 20%
5. Fish cake - 15%
6. Doner kebab - 14%
7. Steak pie - 13%
8. Chicken burger - 11%
9. Battered chicken - 10%
10. Scampi - 10%

While the nation clearly shares a love for classic fish and chips, there are some chippie menu items that cause somewhat of a divide between the generations.

The younger generation is much more partial to chicken nuggets, chicken burgers and doner kebabs than the older generations, with 1 in 5 (20%) 18–24-year-olds ordering these at their local chippie. Meanwhile just one in twenty 55–64-year-olds would choose chicken nuggets, and only one in twenty people over 65 would opt for a doner kebab.

The UK's favourite chip topping

Now we’ve established what the nation wants as their mains, another age-old debate is what’s the best chip topping?

It turns out that people like to keep things simple when it comes to their condiments, preferring to stick to classic salt and vinegar, with 44% choosing this as their favourite chip accompaniment. Simplifying things further still, 1 in 10 (12%) just would ask for just salt on their chips, while curry sauce and ketchup are the most popular in terms of sauces, each with 8% of the vote.

Shockingly, other chip shop classics like mushy peas (1%) and gravy (2%) proved to be very unpopular amongst UK residents.

The nation's top five favourite chip toppings:

1. Salt and vinegar - 44%
2. Just salt - 12%
3. Ketchup - 8%
4. Curry sauce - 8%
5. Mayonnaise or just vinegar - 5%

The northern English classic, cheese, chips and gravy, proved to be unbelievably unpopular with 0% of the vote. And people aren’t looking to spice up their chippie tea either, with no votes at all for hot sauce as a preferred condiment.

Norwich is the takeaway capital of the UK

So, what makes a city a ‘Takeaway Capital’?

Having a good ratio of takeaways compared to number of residents is one key factor we considered – you naturally want to have plenty of choice when it comes to ordering in. We also investigated which city’s local population loves takeaways the most. How many people are searching online for takeaways every month? We combined these all-important factors to create a ranking system, scoring 25 major UK cities out of possible 100 points to crown our winner.

According to our calculations, Norwich is the UK’s takeaway capital thanks to its ratio of 21 takeaways to every 10,000 people. Additionally, Norwich was found to have the highest proportion of local people searching for takeaways online every month (33.9) – earning the city an impressive 92/100 in our rankings.

Leeds and Manchester came a close second and third, though Manchester takes the crown for the best ratio of takeaways to people, with 27.9 per 10,000 people.

UK's top ten 'Takeaway Capitals'

So, what can we 'takeaway' from all this?!

With the UK having such an amazing variety of takeaways on offer, we wanted to pin down whether there are any particular ‘foodie’ cities that do takeaways best. And it seems that Norwich may be a hidden gem for takeaway food.

Looking at our research, it is clear that people up and down the UK can agree on one thing – there’s nothing better than a chippie tea with salt and vinegar for bringing people together. Keeping things simple and classic is the clear preference!

About our research

We surveyed 2,000 UK adults in May 2022. The search data figures were taken from Google Keyword Planner in May 2022. The figures relate to average monthly UK searches across the last 12 months.

Sources and Methodology

We compared the population for 25 major UK cities to the number of takeaways in each, to find out which had the highest proportion of takeaways to people.

We combined this with the number of local search queries for popular takeaway cuisines pro capita using a ranking system, to determine the UK’s ‘Takeaway Capital’ – where the locals are most keen on a takeaway, and where takeaways are most readily available.

We also determined the UK’s most popular takeaway cuisine category using nationwide and regional search data, and via a survey to find out their typical order.

 Major UK cities' populations:

• ONS 
• World Population Review 
• Population Stat 

Data on number of takeaways per city sourced from the Food Standards Agency. 

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