Spice bag lands in UK pubs as Wetherspoons adds Dublin favorite

Wetherspoons has added a Dublin-born favorite to its UK menus, introducing a spice bag described by patrons as among the chain’s best meals. The dish, a Chinese-inspired mix of seasoned fried chicken, chips, vegetables and curry sauce, is being sold across Wetherspoons pubs in England, Scotland and Wales for around £8.99. The launch comes as social media users quickly flooded TikTok and other platforms with reactions, praising the dish’s crunch, heat and portion size.

The spice bag’s origin story traces to Sunflower, a Dublin Chinese takeaway that reportedly served the dish off the menu and to staff only from 2006 onward. The closely guarded recipe is said to have leaked across the city, helping the dish grow from a local late-night staple into a national sensation after last year’s Spice Bag Meal Deal from nearby Xian Street Food made Deliveroo’s top ten trending dishes globally, per The Times. The trend later spilled over to chefs across the country, with late-night London takeaways experimenting with containers of the meal on their menus. Wetherspoons’ version expands the classic by including chicken strips and chicken breast bites, tossed in a salt-and-chilli Chinese-style spice mix with red onion, sliced chillies and coriander. Wetherspoons’ food-development manager, Sarah Shaw, said the chain aims to offer customers the widest range of meals and that the spice bag has proven especially popular with Irish patrons, adding that it should translate well to pubs across England, Scotland and Wales.

Since its menu debut last week, the dish has sparked a flurry of online chatter. TikTok content creator Callum Ryan shared his first bite on the platform, posting that the dish arrived “looking unreal” and that, in his words, it was “the best meal I’ve ever had in Spoons.” Other reviewers echoed the praise, with users describing the portions as generous and the flavors as bold. While some social-media voices noted a preference for less spice, many commenters urged others to try it for themselves. The online conversation even included viewers who had previously assumed the dish was only available in Ireland.

The Spice Bag at Wetherspoons arrives amid a broader wave of cross-border menu experimentation within the pub chain. In nearby cultural news, The Sun Wharf—the chain’s forthcoming pub near London’s historic sites—has been teased ahead of its Sept. 30 opening. Meanwhile, The London Dungeon, after relocating from Tooley Street to County Hall on the South Bank in 2013, staged a cleansing séance at its former site to clear lingering “ghosts” before the move. A London Dungeon spokesperson framed the move as expanding the venue’s horror repertoire while acknowledging the enduring fascination with Victorian-era London among visitors. The cleansing tale has fed into a broader narrative about London’s evolving leisure landscape as Wetherspoons expands its footprint.

For patrons curious about the chain’s footprint, the market continues to feature a mix of historical venues and modernized spaces. In one nod to Britain’s pub culture, The Sir John Hawkshaw in Cannon Street, London—touted as the smallest Wetherspoons in the country—occupies a compact footprint with 41 tables and no on-site restrooms, requiring patrons to use nearby station facilities. The tiny pub underscores how Wetherspoons is testing formats across varied settings as it introduces new dishes like the spice bag to different audiences.

From the kitchen to the community, the spice bag’s rise illustrates how menus travel and adapt across borders. The dish blends Irish dining curiosity with Chinese-inspired flavors, a reflection of contemporary urban eating where fusion and social-media buzz help propel regional specialties into national conversations. Wetherspoons’ approach—pairing a well-loved local dish with its traditional pub framework—aims to attract both devoted fans and curious newcomers who are drawn to a sense of novelty and shared experience at familiar drinking and dining spaces. As the chain gauges reception across the United Kingdom, observers note that the spice bag’s trajectory will depend on a mix of taste, portion size, and how well it travels from Dublin’s late-night culture into the English, Scottish, and Welsh pub scenes.

The spice bag trend also spotlights the power of digital word-of-mouth in the dining sector. Creators like Callum Ryan, who helped spread the dish’s reputation beyond Ireland, describe social-media-driven discoveries as a factor in the dish reaching a wider audience. In this moment, Wetherspoons’ spice bag is less a single menu item than a case study in how culinary ideas migrate—from a local takeaway in Dublin to a chain-wide feature that resonates with pub diners across the UK.