I was driving away from Bridlington, after my shift working in a fish and chip shop, when I finally started sniffing the local air. The smell was unmistakable, that sweet waft of hot animal fats, the sharp, high note of frying potato and across it all the tang of freshly cooked fish. I know that Britain's 150-year-old fish and chip tradition is deeply embedded in the culture here on the North Yorkshire coast; that they take the business of deep frying fish and chipped potatoes very seriously indeed. But it had never occurred to me that fish and chips was as much a part of the environment as the winds off the North Sea and the bruised, scudding clouds.

It took me another 20 minutes to realise that North Yorkshire didn't smell of fish and chips at all. I did. My hair was heavy with its perfume. "It's the one bit about this job I hate," I had been told by Matthew Silk, my boss for the day, earlier. "Nobody wants to smell of dripping."

Silk and his business partner Tracy Poskitt both got into the trade as teenagers, but only went into business together a couple of years ago when they found themselves competing for the same shop space. They now employ a dozen people. "I'd always thought I was the top of the game," says Tracy, who is 48, and has a grin to light up Blackpool. "Then I met Matthew and thought, 'Gosh, he's good.'" Matthew, 38, thought the same way. "I've always been about the quality of the product. Tracy's fish and chips were OK but what struck me was that her shop was immaculate, her staff so well trained."

When I decided to get to grips with the knotty subtleties at the cholesterol-drenched heart of Britain's gastronomic culture, there was only one place to go. Matthew and Tracy's shop, Fish and Chips at 149 in Bridlington was named fish and chip shop of the year in the industry's annual awards. They were first out of 11,000 outlets in the UK and Ireland. And as Britain leads the world in fish and chips, that makes 149 the best fish and chip shop on the planet. Where else was I supposed to learn the ropes?

Not that there is anything glamorous or sexy about 149. Fish and chips is not that kind of dish or that kind of shop. It sits on a small suburban shopping parade a street back from the seafront, which itself is a tidy rather than garish affair. Bridlington has none of the self-consciously cute fishing village airs of Whitby to its north or the desperate faded Regency grandeur of nearby Scarborough. Bridlington is a town of hard work and sinew, and 149 is the smart but unpretentious chippy which feeds them. "Go down to the seafront on a weekend and I promise you, the six bins down there will be full to overflowing with our packaging," Matthew says.

I roll up at 11am; Matthew and his team have been at it since 7.30am, chipping the half-tonne of potatoes they'll need for the day. Matthew has personally skinned, boned and portioned 40 stone of fish. In a week they'll shift 5,000 portions of fish and chips, 90% of it haddock. "It's always been haddock in Bridlington. Doncaster and Sheffield it's cod. Selby is haddock. Whitby is half and half. Just tradition, depending on what the fishing boats that served each town used to land."

Does he worry about sustainability? "Of course. All our fish is line caught. I only use boats certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. Every Monday morning I spend two or three hours calling around my suppliers seeing who's got what." There's even a small slate sign, sitting on the counter, on which they chalk up the name of the boat which landed that day's fish. Today, it's the Fisk. He's equally obsessive about his potatoes. "The ideal potato is a Maris Piper. Right mix of starch to moisture."

We're standing in a spotless shed out back of the shop. Tracy has put me into 149 chef's whites, with my name stitched at the breast and cook's trousers in a large brown beige check. She has insisted my jewellery come off and my unruly locks be restrained under a hair net. A cap in the same shades as the trousers finishes it off. She looks me up and down and laughs. What's so funny? "You look proper," she says. By which I think she means that a baggy-arsed metropolitan journalist who doesn't look like he's done a day's manual labour in his life, is ready to do some proper work.

Matthew started his professional life rumbling – ie cleaning – potatoes, and that's how I'm going to start. I have to get a sack of the things, thick with Yorkshire earth, into a cylinder that will wash and skin them, and then to the chipper and into a plastic barrel of water. "It helps to drain out some of the starch," Tracy says.

Back in the kitchen, I ask Matthew for his batter recipe. "I'd have to kill you if I told you," he says. "But it's the obvious things: flour, a raising agent, salt." The key, he says, is temperature. "The batter has to be seriously cold, say 6C, so that when it hits the fat at 185C the reaction happens." Sitting on the side, wrapped in blue greaseproof paper, are blocks of hard, white dripping, rendered from beef fat. "It has to be dripping. My grandad used dripping when he was in the trade over in Beverley. It's about the flavour."

For the fish cakes he uses a slightly stronger batter and a fryer at a slightly lower temperature. "You have to get your whole hand in the batter and then you have to place it in the fryer. Don't drop it in. Place it in." What if my fingers touch the bubbling fat? "Don't be a jibber." What's a jibber? "A big girl's blouse." I am determined not to be a big girl's blouse. I place my fish cakes, feel the heat as my fingertips graze the surface, but come away intact. They nod approvingly. I am shown the technique with the fillets of haddock, the way you have to drape each one into the fryer, the flick of the wrist to turn it on the surface. Meanwhile, baskets of pre-fried chips are coming down for the final fry to feed the hordes now arriving for the lunchtime service.

And there are hordes; on a Saturday they can queue for 40 minutes. Derek Walker comes here half a dozen times a month. "When you come here and ask for it lightly done, you get it lightly done." He asks for two Golden Years, the smaller fish portions aimed at senior citizens but available to anyone for £3.95. Even a large haddock costs only £4.65. Throw on the largest portion of chips and it still only comes to £6.85 all in.

There are builders in their lunch breaks and people from the nearby shops, and a few elders of the tribe who have come a distance because they've heard tell 149 is that good. Some ask for scraps, the curls of batter that flower in the fat and dance on the surface. There are gangly schoolboys, hands buried in pockets, fringes over eyes, quick with the pleases and thank yous, who order a polystyrene tray heaped with chips with a drench of gravy or curry sauce. Those two are made from powder, but the mushy peas they make themselves. They steep them overnight, throwing in a little sugar according to a recipe of Matthew's. "I worried about diabetes when he told me about the recipe," says Tracy. "And I just don't care," says Matthew with a grin. Though he does. He cares a lot. He's keen to tell me that a portion of fish and chips has half the calories of a doner kebab, and two thirds of a burger and fries.

I fry some haddock fillets and, when they're done we all go out back to try the product. I can see why people travel for this: the batter is crisp and stays crisp. There's none of that squelch on the bottom, where it has rested on the cardboard. The fish inside is perfectly steamed, the flakes sliding away from each other obligingly. The chips, as thick as my finger, are exactly as they should be, that balance of crisp outside and fluffy within. We have salt. We have malt vinegar. The summer sky is gunmetal grey, and there is a light breeze from the east. We have everything we need.

Back inside I'm set to work alongside Amanda and Nikki serving out front and, as with all jobs that look simple, it turns out not to be. The boxes have been designed with two holes at the back so the fish doesn't go soggy. The chips are meant to go in a partitioned section at the front. I keep throwing them in together and get a bout of eye-rolling from my colleagues. But eventually the crowds are fed and at 2pm the shop closes. At 149 they need two hours to clean down and restock for the five-hour evening service. "Fish and chips are the one thing that all people love," Tracy says. "And they all want the good stuff."

That's for sure. And if they're going to get it they could probably do without me in the way. I hand back my whites and my cap, step outside and sniff the air. Only when I wash my hair that evening will I finally forsake the one bit of my day at the fryers that I had been lucky enough to take away. I am almost sad to lose the smell.