{"id":2983,"date":"2012-10-22T15:51:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T15:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/?p=2983"},"modified":"2012-10-22T18:02:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T18:02:25","slug":"pie-mash-jellied-eels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/?p=2983","title":{"rendered":"Pie, Mash &#038; Jellied Eels."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We were in London this weekend&#8230; and for no reason other than it seemed like a really good idea at the time, we decided to visit a traditional London Pie &#038; Mash shop for our lunch.<\/p>\n<p>We went to Manze&#8217;s in Chapel Market&#8230; a decision mostly influenced by 3 key factors:<\/p>\n<p>(1) It wasn&#8217;t too far away.<\/p>\n<p>(2) Time Out have it listed on their page of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeout.com\/london\/restaurants\/features\/7721\/London-s_best_pie_and_mash.html\" target=\"_blank\">London&#8217;s best Pie and Mash shops<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>(3) Giffgaff&#8217;s mobile data service was borked that morning (grrr!) and Chapel Market was one of the few places I thought I could successfully navigate to without the aid of cybernetic augmentation (AKA GPS and google maps!)<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, my sense of direction prevailed, and we got there easily. The shop looks like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/manzes.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/manzes-221x300.jpg\" alt=\"Manzies, Chapel Market\" title=\"M.Manzes\" width=\"221\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2984\" srcset=\"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/manzes-221x300.jpg 221w, https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/manzes.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 221px) 100vw, 221px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And, through the magic all-pervasiveness of google street view, you can even have a virtual wander around the shop interior. Here&#8217;s the table we sat at:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"425\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/maps.google.co.uk\/maps?q=&amp;layer=c&amp;sll=51.533391,-0.109096&amp;cid=4266246057818483478&amp;panoid=1Rldq3t7pK8MEHUx_pW_dg&amp;cbp=13,96.94,,0,27.2&amp;gl=GB&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=&amp;hnear=&amp;ll=51.533391,-0.109096&amp;spn=0.006295,0.006295&amp;t=h&amp;cbll=51.533364,-0.109097&amp;source=embed&amp;output=svembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t technology wonderful?<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the place certainly looked like the real deal. But what was the food like? First up, pie and mash:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/pie-mash.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/pie-mash-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"pie mash\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2988\" srcset=\"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/pie-mash-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/pie-mash.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Pie and mash is a traditional East London dish, dating from the 19th century. Back in days of yore, pretty much the only meat that working class Londoners could afford to eat was eel &#8212; a fish that thrived in the filthy waters of the river Thames. The eel would be served in a pie, along with cheap mashed potato, and accompanied by a sauce known as &#8220;liquor&#8221;. The liquor was a green sauce, made from the water that the eels were cooked in, flavoured up with parsley and other herbs. <\/p>\n<p>As the Thames&#8217; eel population declined though overfishing, cheap cuts of mutton or beef were minced up and used in the pies instead&#8230; but the liquor remained. Nowadays, the pie you get with pie and mash will almost always be minced beef, but it&#8217;ll still be served with the traditional liquor. It seems like a bit of an odd combination, if you don&#8217;t know the history. (Actually, it&#8217;s a bit of an odd combination even if you DO know the history).<\/p>\n<p>We were pretty hungry, and opted for &#8220;large&#8221; pies&#8230; (you could also opt for &#8220;small&#8221; or two &#8220;small&#8221; pies on one plate &#8211; which is &#8212; confusingly &#8212; actually a bigger serving than the large pie). The mashed potato is traditionally scraped along one side of the plate (just like you see in the photo); I can only guess that&#8217;s to act as a kind of dam for the liquor, and to make the plate easier to carry without spilling its contents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Verdict:<\/strong> I really wasn&#8217;t very impressed. I like pies. A lot. And I&#8217;m also quite fond of mashed potato. And this is a shop which specialises in selling those EXACT two things. I was, therefore, expecting some kind of near-religious experience. What I was actually served was some of the blandest mashed potato I&#8217;ve ever eaten, and a barely-passable mince and veg pie.<\/p>\n<p>The potato didn&#8217;t have any flavour to it at all&#8230; no hint of butter, or salt, or milk&#8230; or even the flavour of a particularly good mashing potato. It was just white, mashed vegetable matter. As for the pie; I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s how it&#8217;s *meant* to be served, but the top was nicely browned, but the bottom crust was barely cooked &#8211; it was more like the texture of pasta than baked pastry &#8230; a bit like if you&#8217;ve cooked a frozen pie but got the oven temperature wrong, so the top burns and the bottom barely cooks at all. The filling was OK; the meat was cooked through, but the root vegetables were a bit tough. In summary: not a particularly edifying pie experience at all. I could walk into any Newcastle chip shop, and get a pie ten times as tasty as that one, for half the price.<\/p>\n<p>The only redeeming feature of the dish was the liquor, which at least had a bit of flavour about it. But&#8230; on the whole, it was probably the blandest and least-interesting plate of food I&#8217;ve <strong>ever<\/strong> paid for in a restaurant\/cafe. <\/p>\n<p>However, Pie and Mash shops are not just famous for their pie and mash. They also sell THIS epicurean cockney delight:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/eels.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/eels-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Jellied Eels\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-2991\" srcset=\"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/eels-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/eels.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jellied Eels! &#8230; and, obviously, we couldn&#8217;t pay a visit to a Pie and Mash shop without sampling this stuff too. Though we decided a single bowl shared between the two of us would probably be sufficient for our needs \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never had eels before. The flesh wasn&#8217;t too bad &#8212; it tasted like cheap, white fish; you&#8217;d certainly never mistake it for cod or haddock, but it was perfectly palatable, and might even make a tasty dish if it was served hot in a nice sauce. Jellied eels are, however, served chilled&#8230; and &#8212; as such &#8212; taste pretty much like what they are: cold, white-fleshed, not-quite-premier-league fish.<\/p>\n<p>The skin was slimy, fatty, and unappetising in every way &#8230; and quite a chunk of each slice of eel was occupied by the spine of the fish &#8230; so it was quite picky stuff to eat. The jelly &#8212; which is apparently made to a different secret recipe by each pie and mash shop &#8212; just tasted like slightly-briny water to me.<\/p>\n<p>We picked our way through the white meat, and decided we&#8217;d probably had a sufficient amount of jellied eel for one lifetime. <\/p>\n<p>The total bill came to thirteen-pound-something. It was certainly a memorable experience, and at least I can now claim to have eaten Pie, Mash, and Jellied eels in an authentic London Pie and Mash shop &#8230; but I couldn&#8217;t help looking enviously at the customers of the branch of McDonalds three doors down as we made our escape&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were in London this weekend&#8230; and for no reason other than it seemed like a really good idea at the time, we decided to visit a traditional London Pie &#038; Mash shop for our lunch. We went to Manze&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/?p=2983\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,158,49],"tags":[172],"class_list":["post-2983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bizarre","category-food","category-travels","tag-shouldve-gone-to-mcdonalds","tumblog-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2983"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3015,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2983\/revisions\/3015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnshepherd.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}