The kitchen runs on recycled cooking oil
??? The mind boggles. What does recycled cooking oil taste like?? No, hang on, I already know. I taste it every few weeks, whenever I visit one of the run-of-the-mill local fish and chip shops, who also generally indulge in producing nasty stuff, such deep-fried battered sausages, and other internal-organ-destroying, Australian culinary delights.
Nothing, but nothing beats fresh cooking oil. My favorite fish and chippery uses high quality vegetable oil, not blended and bulked up with cottonseed oil... and they change it out weekly.
Nothing, but nothing, is designed to destroy deep-fried delights faster than old oil... and oil that has been contaminated with sausage grease and other heavy tallow-type fats.
Give me my fish and chips fried in fresh cooking oil... not 4 week-old-oil, that makes the food taste like it's been fried in used crankcase oil.
Oil loses it's flavour with high heat, becomes contaminated with other flavours and undesirable heavy fats, after a week or 10 days of constant use, and it transfers those nasty flavours to good food such as high quality fish, which has a delicate flavour.