Welcome to Chip Paper, by Patrick Hanlon and Russell Alford, AKA GastroGays.
Chip Paper is our space on Substack where we share long-form food writing features, deep dives, snappy travel guides and recipes, all punctuated by our own hand-drawn illustrations. We started as bloggers, built our brand on Instagram and are now freelance food and travel writers and restaurant critics for The Sunday Times Ireland. You can also find us over at gastrogays.com.
What to Expect on Chip Paper?
Chip Paper is all about deep dives and long-reads in food writing — from opinion pieces and round-ups to restaurant reviews and guides. We write from the heart and speak with our chests on a variety of topics related to food and travel. Our content is a fluid flow and not a concrete mix but there are a couple of ongoing arcs (click the headings of any/all below for the archive of that section)
Condiment Curiosity
Deep-dives into iconic food brands and enduring cupboard staples, tracing their history and also delving into unique uses.
Everywhere We Ate In
Rather than long prosaic travel pieces these are super snappy city guides, literally listing everywhere we ate in a destination, from a short break to Stockholm to a weekend in Krakow.
Restaurant Writing
Before we became the Sunday Times Ireland restaurant critics this is where our restaurant critique journey began. Now, since we cover the island of Ireland in a newspaper column each week we now focus reviews on restaurants outside of Ireland and also write more generally about restaurant experiences that had a lasting impression, like Brasserie Zédel or Ekstedt.
Under Bench Staples
We’ve written quite a bit about competitive cookery reality TV shows but MasterChef Australia takes the biscuit. This is a ‘section’ dedicated to our musings on the best TV show of its kind on the planet.
Recipes
Every now and then we will share recipes (again, always illustrated, no photographs) direct to your feed and inbox. We have so many recipes already on gastrogays.com free to access for all.
Why Subscribe?
You’ll never miss an update, and will send each new post directly to your inbox. We do recommend downloading the Substack app to keep on top of our writing and all your other favourite writers, but having our content searchable and clickable right from your personal inbox is so handy.
Free vs. Paid
We’re creating Chip Paper with you, the paid subscriber, in mind, and hopefully you’ll feel we’re writing for you, too. We want to make more of the food content we adore to make, specifically for a smaller audience who find real value and joy in it. So, by being a part of our subscriber pool you’re not only directly supporting us but also empowering us to produce more of the content we want to make and you want to enjoy.
Free subscribers will receive significantly less content, and more overviews and snippets of what’s going on with Chip Paper, whilst paid membership will get all of our content plus access to the entire archive since 2022. Both free and paid subscribers receive a monthly digest newsletter (check them out here) packed full of recommendations of what we’re eating, drinking, listening to and watching.
As an aside to Chip Paper, all our content on GastroGays.com and our @GastroGays social channels is 100% free to-access, as ever, however most of the Chip Paper content is reserved for paid subscribers.
Gift a subscription?
If you want to share our content and spread the word, why not gift a subscription to someone you have in mind? We would be so incredibly grateful
Patrick & Russell
