WATCH: Northern Ireland takeaway serving up battered Christmas dinner

Or should that be a battered Brussels sprout among the roasties?

Park Avenue Takeaway in Lurgan has given the long-established festive feast a chip shop makeover, and invited customers to sample a battered Christmas dinner.

Owner Tim Dillon said: “It’s something a wee bit different.

“I saw one done in Scotland a few years ago, that’s where I got the idea.”

The Battered Christmas dinner includes battered vegetables – parsnip, carrot and Brussels sprouts – as well as a large battered cocktail sausage along with a battered Christmas pudding for dessert.

The non-battered ingredients are turkey, ham, stuffing, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, chips, cranberry sauce and gravy.

Tim said: “The Brussels sprouts proved to be a challenge, but we’re happy with the end result.

“It’s hopefully something people will want to try.”

Tim said all being well it would go on sale on Monday, priced £9.95.

He said a portion of the profits from every battered Christmas dinner would go to charity.

He commented: “I wanted to do something for the community. It’s the same reason why I bought the chip shop, to give jobs to people in the community, to give the community a lift.”

Tim said the organisation he had chosen to benefit from Christmas dinner sales is PIPS – a charity which supports people having suicidal thoughts and helps families and friends who have been touched by suicide.

Businessman Tim took over the takeaway in September and while he wanted to preserve the reputation that its former owner had established, he made a few tweaks to the chip shop.

He said: “I did a bit of rebranding, started using JustEat, a few things like that.

“We’re trying to be a little bit different from all the other chippies.”

Of the boom in services like JustEat and Deliveroo during lockdown, Tim said: “It’s blown my mind. I didn’t have any background or experience in it. I’m new to this.

“When I was filling out the menu for JustEat there were a couple of boxes I forgot to give the contents of.

“I put in one called ‘The Lurgan Spade’ but I hadn’t said what was in it so it was a mystery box.

“People were ordering it and we were putting stuff in it, I don’t think they were all the same.

“It’s crazy what people will order. They see something new and they order it without knowing what they’re getting.”

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