Dad takes his four kids on a 128-mile drive to Binley Mega Chippy only to find it’s closed

Simon Harris took his four children, seven-year-old Luke, five-year-old Emma, ​​four-year-old James and one-year-old Thomas, on a trip to visit the Binley Mega Chippy in Coventry

An unhappy dad drove his kids 250 miles to enjoy lunch at a chip shop made famous on TikTok – only to find it was CLOSED.

Simon Harris took his four children, seven-year-old Luke, five-year-old Emma, ​​four-year-old James and one-year-old Thomas, on a trip to visit the Binley Mega Chippy.

The family drove 125 miles from their home in Hockley, Essex, to the shop in Binley, Coventry last Sunday.

But after a five-and-a-half hour drive, they were disappointed to find the famous red and yellow eatery had its shutters down.

Simon, 38, said: “The kids were more excited than me to go to the Chippy.

“Luke and Emma enjoy watching TikTok videos. I save lots of videos for you to watch. There was a point where you couldn’t move for Binley Mega Chippy videos with that catchy tune.

“They all sang the song. Because of my work, I was a bit curious about it.

“I was pretty tired from the cars and car meets there, I saw videos on TikTok of people doing burnouts and I wanted to get there early in the day before it closes.

“There were also four or five other groups of people who had obviously done the same thing.

“There is a sign that says closed on Sundays but google says open.

“To be fair, I was just glad we went. I was glad the kids took it so well, it was great to be there and get some pictures of it.

“The owner came out and thanked us for the support and was in disbelief at the popularity the place has.

“It was a bit disappointing. We ended up walking around there eating huge pizzas so it wasn’t a wasted trip.”

Kamal Gandhi, 70, owner of Binley Mega Chippy, recorded a 30 per cent win rocket after thousands of fans descended on the Chippy last month.

Mr Gandhi, who has been running takeaways for 30 years but took over Binley Mega Chippy seven months ago, said: “The whole thing has gone crazy.

“Everyone who comes here is very excited and we love giving them what they want, which is great food.

“I hope this isn’t a flash in the pan and they keep coming back.”

Ever since Chippy’s went global, Mr. Gandhi and his family of 10 who run the diner have had customers from Australia and Texas eager to try his food.

Simon, who runs his own blog site Man Behaving Badly, admitted he’s been trolled online ever since his failed Chippy trip.

He said: “People said ‘why are you wasting gas’, ‘why are you dragging children across the country’ and ‘we’re going through a livelihood crisis’.

“The kids wanted to be there. You can’t do anything these days, neither on the Internet nor in general.

“I don’t know what it is, it’s just a day with the kids.

“It’s not like I went out for afternoon tea with the Taliban, we just went out.”

Despite the unfortunate outing, Simon hasn’t ruled out traveling to other viral hits in the future.

He added: “If something else goes viral I would travel, but I wouldn’t be that trustworthy of Google. In the future I might call ahead just to be sure.

“Since then our local Fish and Chips shop in Hockley just started doing TikTok videos too and they just invited us over. It’s just down the road.”