Welcome | The First Thousand...

Welcome to Chip Paper, a newsletter from Patrick and Russell dedicated to longer-form writing on food and curating content for a keen group of subscribers ✍🏼

Welcome to Chip Paper –– the next iteration for us, a stride into the future. Or, maybe it’s actually a return to form; retracing steps, revisiting the past.

You see, over the last few years, we’ve been remarked for several things, but being branded with the label “Instagrammers” sticks out, for better or worse. Engaging stories tirelessly posted, fast paced recipe reels, eye-catching photography and well-loved city guide highlights packed with information, yeah, yeah, yeah… but visuals are not what we got into this game for. Visual content is actually what we’ve had to graft at and learn quickly in order to keep up, not to mention sustain a two person livelihood as self-employed content creators. However, we’re not pro video editors or photographers, we’re writers.

Almost ten years ago we started a blog, and it was all about communicating and connecting via the written word. Back then, images were just palate cleansers, supplementary, set between courses to offer respite and reset the appetite. Words carried way more worth, though images added depth, context and emphasis. We came to blogging probably just ahead of its peak, but then a few years in we began to see  social media’s allied forces - Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and, now, TikTok - forging a defensive that has effectively rendered blogging redundant –– or, as good as. 

The world has evolved since 2013, the digital sphere has evolved and we’ve evolved in many ways. Taking stock of the past decade, we’re chuffed at all we’ve achieved, we’ve made this work, last, prosper and earn, though however far we’ve come we’ve always been keen to stop every so often and take the temperature. Our days now are spent tapping between apps endlessly, editing images and videos, chasing views, hearts and interaction, engaged in a paso doble with a fickle, direction-changing algorithm… all this rather than sitting down and writing. Grafting, rather than crafting. 

Are we opening the front door, motioning you in and showing you around our new home? Yes, and no. Let’s put it this way: we find ourselves in that pressurised, pointed part of our lives: early thirties and everyone around us marrying, mortgaging and many making babies. Like others our age we harbour a dream of a picture perfect ‘forever home’, two up, two down, detached and sandwiched by a garden front and back, with maybe a little bolthole down the country somewhere –– a wild Atlantic getaway to while away weekends and escape to for lazy, hazy summer weeks. We currently have neither address within reach, but in a way this format represents that countryside escape. It’s a home, but it’s not THE home. GastroGays.com isn’t going anywhere. In fact, all our outlets will continue as is, but this is going to become the home-from-home. The second address, the escape down the country we want to invite you to, for which only you have the key or code. 

We’re going longer form, and we want to write, because we believe that in the fast-paced world of social media where attention spans seem sesame seed-sized that a tonic exists. There’s a wide open space for those leisurely, lingering moments, bellyflopping into seas of great writing and soaking in the prose. And, because - as reminded for those who’ve been around the block with us as well as explained above for those newer to these pastures - the reason we started all this was writing. And we’re tired. We’re tired of being only considered Instagrammers rather than writers, though a decade of written work stands to us. We’ve been patient, paying our dues, being the ‘yes’ men, contributing to many other publications and building a substantial body of work with heart and value in the hopes a regular ‘column inches’ gig might come of it on the national or international stage. But it never came. So, we’re doing what we’ve always done: starting ourselves, just like the blog, the podcast, and now the stack. 

So, yes, welcome to this new home, which feels new and unfamiliar but will soon have the fire lit, the blanket across your knees and a glass of Rioja in your hand. Our aim is to initially drop this into your inbox each fortnight, then quickly increasing to weekly once we’ve found our feet and the place feels lovingly lived-in. What you can expect is longer writing on topics which we already cover –– food, travel and hospitality. Op eds, for want of a better phrase. Exclusive recipes. Restaurant reviews, which ’til now we’ve not veered into before in a real way. More personal and in-depth writing on subjects that matter to us.

‘Chip Paper’ as a title may have a familiar ring to some who’ve been around a while, but since the pandemic began our audience has added on an extra 30% so there’s lots of fresh eyes to consider. For about a year we used to do a round-up feature of food critics’ writings every weekend, drawing links between where was profiled and critiqued — which certainly made some critics sit up stiffly. It was called ‘Today’s Chip Paper’, twisting the adage that ‘today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper’, where we were summarising and surmising on that week’s restaurant reviews. However, the base content for that at the time became predictable and prosaic we stopped funnelling the time and energy. Now, we’ve repurposed that name –– just like newspapers once-read were used in a second way as a receptacle for fresh fried delights, we’re taking that former title and giving it a second life.

We’ve spent almost a decade growing an audience at home and abroad, establishing a unique voice and an authority whilst selling skill far and wide. But, now, we want to look inward again, focusing on creating for a core group, for which we hope you’ll be excited to be part of. We want to spend time writing with more razor focus, vigour and vision, and we want to offer that exclusively to those in that core group. We’ll send out some of Chip Paper free-for-all every so often as we see this as both a free and paid-for endeavour, but for the most part this will be an exclusive, subscriber-only zone creating solely for those strapped in for the ride. 

This is the first 1,000 words of many, many words, which we can’t wait to write.