Context!

Britain as a whole has never had a good reputation for food, and this is especially true of our neighbours to the North. I actually think this is pretty unfair, but a long essay about why I think Yorkshire puddings and shortbread are genuinely top tier eats would be really boring to read. Also George Orwell beat me to it.

Anyway there’s no denying that British takeaways have been producing some artery-clogging miracles to rival our neighbours across the Atlantic for decades now – none moreso dreaded than the “Battered Mars Bar”, literally a chocolate bar immersed in hot batter. That’s literally it. That’s the recipe.

First invented in the remote coastal town of Stonehaven – not far from the birthplace of infamous serial killer Dennis Nilsen, although I don’t believe these two events were related – the fried Mars Bar became a bit of a meme as it spread across Scotland, outraging the press and becoming a symbol of Britain’s growing obesity problem.

In the years since, as the UK has grown a bit more health conscious, the “dessert” – if you want to even call it that – seems to have faded in popularity. Nonetheless, after all the hype, I was determined to try it in my first trip to Scotland.

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The Experience

Glasgow centre has a chain of chip shops called “Blue Lagoon”. Bizarrely they’re open all day (like a Greggs) and even do breakfast(?!) in the morning. They also a make a point to emphasise that they do, in fact, stock battered Mars bars.

There was a Blue Lagoon right outside my hotel, near Glasgow Central station, so after a long day of museum hopping (and eating an “actual” meal at a burrito restaurant), on my way back to my room I pop in and place my order. I ask the lady at the till for the “world famous dessert”. A regular-sized Mars bar (let’s not get TOO crazy after all) is taken from a box, unwrapped and placed into an unseen fryer. After two minutes of waiting, I received my newly-battered Mars bar for the princely sum of £2.95.

I head up to my room, bring out Coffee Frog to share in my pain, and get to work. I should note that I had no cutlery so I was working with my bare hands here.

After taking several photos, to be used in case there’s an inquest into my premature death from heart disease, I pick up my self-punishment and get to work. The bar is only lukewarm at this point. I muster the courage and take a bite.

Surprisingly the batter doesn’t destroy the chocolatey taste of the Mars bar inside. In fact there’s scarcely a savoury taste at all, but the texture is another story. The delicious sensation of biting through the chocolatey shell of a cold Mars bar is replaced by the strange sensation of chip shop batter, followed by semi-melted caramel and nougat. And it’s actually… not terrible. If you’ve ever tried to eat an unopened chocolate bar that you sat on for too long on a hot day, the experience is pretty similar. But the taste itself isn’t really the issue here.

I finish it in three bites. The last is the most difficult – perhaps because I have to accept that I ate the entire thing – and I have some trouble finally swallowing it. I sit back in my chair, alone in a hotel room bar a cuddly frog, and consider what life choices I made that led up to this point.

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How was it?

The Battered Mars bar feels like a gimmick dish made up for tourists, like the fried scorpions for sale in Beijing or the octuple cheese burgers for sale in Las Vegas. But… it isn’t. In my ~480 page guidebook of Scotland, Stonehaven barely gets a page. And yet its notoriety has spread the dish throughout Scotland.

I say this because, although I’d classify the battered Mars bar as “edible”, I can’t imagine buying this more than once. It’s considerably more expensive than just buying a normal Mars bar, and a much worse experience. Not to mention the health issue – estimates vary between 600-900 calories, from what I found online. For something so small it packs a punch to the arteries.

It’s maybe worth trying once, on its own, just to understand what got the Scottish health secretary so upset in the 90s. But that’s all the value it has. It’s deep fried misery in a tiny package.

RATING: 1 raw Mars Bar out of 5

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Helpful Information

• You don’t have to do this
• Blue Lagoon chip shops seem to be everywhere in central Glasgow (I walked past three in five minutes). Se other chip shops will do them too, although whether they’ll advertise it is another question entirely.
• Blue Lagoon do offer vegan meals, and there’s nothing online about them using different batter for these options, so this should mean that the battered Mars bar is at least vegetarian friendly.
• Bear in mind that this dish is (mercifully) very small so it won’t fill you up much. No cutlery is included besides the flag that doubles as a fork.
• As noted earlier you can get a side of ice cream. But that’s just not authentic, you know…?