History
The dish is said to have been invented in 1995 in the Haven Chip Bar (now the Carron) in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen on Scotland's northeast coast. The first recorded mention of the food was in the Aberdeen Evening Express, following a tip off phone call to their journalist Alastair Dalton that a chip shop in Stonehaven had been deep frying Mars Bars for local kids. The Evening Express article included a quote from Mars spokesperson who said this was the first time they had heard of this being done with their product. The following day the story was picked up and run in the Daily Record, August 24, 1995, in an article titled "Mars supper, please". This triggered a chain reaction, with Scottish broadsheets The Herald and Scotsman running the story the following day and the UK broadsheets the day after, each adding their own cultural slant. On the fifth day Keith Chegwin was doing taste tests on The Big Breakfast TV program and the story was going out globally on the BBC World Service. Chip shops around the country immediately responded by putting it on their menus. One phone call to a local paper with a quirky story transformed - in the space of just a few days - a bit of fun between a chip shop owner and some local children in a Scottish fishing town into a global cultural and gastronomic phenomenon. The product is "not authorised or endorsed" by Mars, Inc.
Read more about this topic: Deep-fried Mars Bar
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