Spice Bag | Angela Hui

All views expressed are that of the writer.

There is something mystical about a spice bag. Mention it in any context, and the person you’re talking to will either be: a) intrigued, b) nostalgic, or c) both. Few meals have captured people’s attention like this Chinese-Irish takeaway dish, now up there with Guinness and Kerrygold butter as one of Ireland’s greatest food and drink exports – a dish with such magnetic pull that it beckons like a cartoon scent trail curling its finger and drawing you in.

For those unfamiliar, a spice bag is made up of chips, peppers, onions and crispy fried chicken. Everything is tossed in a wok, transferred into a paper bag and shaken until coated in an addictive mix of salt, garlic powder, onion powder, five-spice, white pepper, sugar, MSG and chicken bouillon powder. You can eat it as is or with a pot of curry sauce on the side for dipping. (Alternatively, you can drench the whole thing in sauce – highly recommended.) 

Its origins are slightly murky, with several takeaways claiming to have invented it, but according to research by Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ Radio, the spice bag was created around 2006 as a quick, filling off-menu staff meal at Sunflower Chinese takeaway in suburban Templeogue, Dublin. Friends of the staff kept asking for it, customers soon caught on, and before long, it became a permanent fixture on the menu. 

The spice bag bears a strong resemblance to salt and pepper chips, first invented by Chinese immigrants running fish and chip shops in 1960s Liverpool. That combination of five-spice, white pepper, sugar and MSG follows a Chinese way of building and balancing flavour, bringing warmth, sweetness and depth. It’s the same thinking you’d find in marinating meats or stir-fries, but tailored to a Western audience’s penchant for chips.

Spice bags have become one of Ireland’s most-ordered takeaway dishes and have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram, with hundreds of videos dedicated to finding the best one. One of the most talked-about versions comes from Xi’an Street Food, a Dublin Chinese restaurant better known for its spicy biang biang noodles. 

The Chinese community in Dublin is relatively small but well-established, with over 26,000 people across Ireland and a strong concentration in the north inner city around Parnell Street and Moore Street, often seen as the city’s Chinatown. Migration came in two waves: earlier arrivals from Hong Kong, many of whom set up food businesses and settled long term, and a later wave from the late 1990s, largely students from mainland China. Both have shaped a dense network of restaurants, supermarkets and takeaways, embedding dishes like the spice bag in a local Chinese-Irish food culture.

“Social media has helped bring spice bags to people around the world. It’s visually pleasing — bright colours, heavy spices, served in a bag — and there’s almost a performance to tearing it open or pouring over curry sauce. Even the name is memorable, so it hardly needs marketing,” explains Aisling O’Leary, an Irish writer who covered spice bags for GQ. She puts its popularity down to the intersection of food, culture and heritage. “There’s something about diaspora when you’re outside your home country. The Irish population abroad is almost equal to the population of Ireland itself. People often become even more attached to their heritage when they leave, and because we don’t have many culinary exports, when we do, we really champion them.”

In Manchester, spice bags appear in Irish pubs like Fibber Magee’s and Kennedy’s, as well as in late-night spots around the Northern Quarter and Oxford Road. Kennedy’s even pushes it further with a Sunday Roast spice bag, a nod to Manchester’s appetite for TikTok-driven food mashups. London has followed a similar path over the last five years, first finding an audience among homesick Irish people looking for a taste of home, but quickly moving beyond that. From Scaldy at The Red Bull pub in Peckham to former Kiln chef Garreth Chambers and his Irish Shpice pop-up, it’s filtered into the wider food scene. Wetherspoons added it to their menus, Iceland launched frozen versions, and at the other end of the scale, Lobster and Burger created a luxe lobster special for St. Patrick’s Day. 

“We sell about 500 to 600 spice bags a week,” says Cathal Farrelly, founder and owner of Paddy Wok, a Deptford-based Irish-style Chinese takeaway operating out of a shipping container in south London. “It’s probably as close as we’re going to get as a national dish that people actually eat. Sure, there’s Irish stew and whatnot, but it’s not what people eat regularly.” 

Irish hospitality is also on the rise across the UK, with new openings in 2025 up more than 71 per cent year on year, according to venue discovery platform DesignMyNight. That growth goes beyond traditional pubs, stretching across London, Manchester and other cities, with venues such as Nancy Spains, Molly Mc’s, Dirty O’Sullivans, Fibber Magee’s, Katie O’Brien’s, Inis and the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, pointing to a longer-term shift in how regional Celtic culture is shaping British food and nightlife. 

For journalist Adam Cheung, whose family ran a Chinese takeaway in Belfast from the 1980s, spice bags existed long before they had a name. His parents were serving chunky chips, fried chicken, onions and peppers tossed in salt-and-chilli seasoning back in the 90s. A dish reminiscent of Cantonese dai pai dong open-air street food stalls, where wok cooking is central, and onions and peppers feature heavily in sweet and sour, black bean, and stir-fried vegetable dishes.

“It didn’t have a special name, and it wasn’t served like it is now,” he says. “No paper bag, no shaking it all together. It came in foil containers with white cardboard lids, and the chips and chicken were usually separate unless someone asked otherwise.”

Customers often customised their orders, swapping chicken for pork or duck, and over time, certain combinations stuck. “We had one regular who came in every Thursday and ordered his version of it. He literally called it the ‘Thursday special’.” 

Cheung believes accessibility and everydayness play a factor in the spice bag’s rise. “Irish people are very proud of their culture, and food plays a big part in that, even the unglamorous bits. Especially the unglamorous bits, actually,” he says. “Not everything meaningful has to be fine dining or recipes that have been passed down through generations. Sometimes it’s what you ordered on a Friday night or after a night out.”

Spice bags grew out of Chinese takeaway culture, and Cheung is keen to point out how dishes like this often come from immigrant, working-class kitchens, only to be repackaged later without that story. His parents first sold their version for £6 and rarely raised prices, increasing it just once to £7.30 before closing in 2019. Now you can find gourmet sharing spice bags priced at £32. “Everyday, affordable food ends up reframed as a trend or a premium experience,” he explains. “There’s always that risk of the origin getting flattened a bit.”

Food phenomena like spice bags don't appear out of nowhere. They came from immigrant Chinese cooks and chefs who often work tirelessly behind the scenes without much recognition in kitchens, adapting their cooking to cater to Western audiences in order to survive, bending to demand and evolving alongside customer preferences. Before social media, this was restricted by geography. Now, with constant global reach, things spread faster, instantly, and something new begins to form.

“Suddenly it has a name, and then it's suddenly everywhere,” Cheung explains. “No one set out to ‘create' a spice bag as a cultural product. It just happened – and now everyone wants a piece of it.”