“I’m a massive condiment fan. I’ve got a fridge and a cupboard full of them,” says Fancy Hank’s owner Mike Patrick. “I think it’s a huge part of any meal, barbeque, get together. We cook all the different bits and pieces, and then we fill the middle of the table with condiments.”

Patrick isn’t just a condiment enthusiast; these days he’s making them, too. “Honestly, a lot of the stuff I was buying in shops was full of really rubbish ingredients,” Patrick says. “A lot of it was imported from overseas, and I thought there’s a massive hole in the market for really good quality Australian-made stuff, which is what we do.”

The humble potato chip is obviously the supreme vehicle for a good sauce. You might even like to maximise it with a chip like Birds Eye Deli Frozen Chips with Golden Ale Beer Batter which uses a “diamond cut” shape to allow for a greater surface area with which to collect – and deliver – your chosen condiments. (By the by, if you want to increase the chip’s crispiness, open the oven door just a little during the last few minutes of cooking to release any steam).

Here’s Patrick’s top-tier picks for when you’re cooking up chips at home.

Whole egg mayonnaise
Mayo is a chip staple, and Patrick reckons you’re best off looking closer at the ingredients list to find the best ones. “I’m a big mayo fan, and something that’s using whole egg is always my preference,” says Patrick. Something like Hellmann’s, a ubiquitous choice in the US, is perfect.

“I’ve done a heap of trips to America researching barbeque, and that was always one of the go-tos they had,” Patrick says. “Duke’s was the other one that was huge, but it’s hard to get here.”

Hot sauce
It’s no surprise that the proprietor of one of Melbourne’s best barbeque joints is a hot-sauce guy. Patrick loves the fruity flavours of his own watermelon and cayenne sauce, and he’s thoroughly enamoured of a sauce made in Melbourne by Lagoon Dining. “I’ve gone through, like, three bottles of that in the last couple of months,” Patrick says. “Because they’re fermenting the chilli it’s got a really umami vibe to it.”

The other hot tip for hot-sauce chips: throw in some creamy mayo and mix it up a little. “It harks back to suburban wedges with sweet chilli sauce and sour cream,” Patrick says. “I grew up eating that as a fancy treat when we went to the pub, so to have a really good mayonnaise and a really good hot sauce, for me it’s the same sort of vibe.”

Barbeque sauce
Forget whatever it is that Australians call “barbeque sauce” – in the US, the flavours vary wildly depending where you are. For Patrick, the best choice for chips is a Carolina-style sauce from Lillie’s Q.

“That’s my favourite barbeque sauce. The gold one is a mustard base which is reminiscent of Carolina barbeque,” Patrick says. “It kind of reminds me of honey-mustard dressing, which for me is like a bit of a nostalgia thing. That stuff’s delicious.”

Pickles
Not a sauce, but a good pickle can lift a chip to a new level, thanks to the acid inherent to pickles contrasting with the salty, crispy chip. “If you’re eating with hot chips, it’s a good contradiction of texture – cold, crisp, and hot and crispy,” says Patrick. “That vinegar and salt in the pickle, that’s that old English malt vinegar and chips. There’s a reason why that stuff’s classic, it just goes so well together.”

Patrick’s pickle pick comes from Cheltenham specialists Dillicious Pickles, founded by American James Barbour to produce nothing but good, old-fashioned dill pickles.

Feta and rosemary
A little Greek influence with some good feta and fresh rosemary is always a chippie crowd-pleaser. “I’ll do that at a fancy dinner party or at a barbeque. It spruces up a tray of chips, makes it a bit more of a dish,” Patrick says. Here he opts for quality Meredith Dairy goat cheese, which you could sprinkle on top of cooked Birds Eye’s Golden Ale Beer Batter chips. “I just sprinkle that over the hot chips and it starts to melt a little bit – it makes it awesome,” says Patrick. “Just crumble it over and then chop some fresh rosemary in and that’s that.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Birds Eye. See the Birds Eye Deli range of seasoned potato chips.