A Cockney favourite ......

Pie & Mash has been on the menu for Londoner's since the eighteenth century.  Although restaurants across the capital have seen a decline in diners, Romford's pie shops are busier than ever - With 2 new venues over the past 12 months. 

Rehan Qayoom tells Community Times why he hopes this working class meal is here for centuries to come. 

 

Pies are traditional British food and have been eaten for many centuries.  Chaucer's cook in The Canterbury Tales is an expert in making pies and pasties. Henry Mayhew describes in some detail the most ancient of the street callings of London, street pie sellers crying their ware with "Hot Penny Pies, all 'ot!". Traditional Pie & Mash shops selling lamb, beef or fruit pies taken with mash, liquor and topped generously with chilli vinegar sprang up across east London in the eighteenth century. Today they usually have white tile walls, with marble floors, tables and work tops, giving a succinctly Victorian appearance.

In London Labour & the London Poor, Mayhew describes a street tradition known as "Tossing the Pie-man" involved (normally younger boys or late night drinkers in the taverns) flipping their penny, with the pie-man calling heads or tails resulting in a free pie if they won or handing over a penny without receiving a pie. A lot of extra trade was made this way as drinkers would toss the pie-man even if they didn't want a pie, amusing themselves by throwing pies at one another, even at the pie-men!

My own first Pie & Mash lunch was at the pie shop in Barking with a friend. It later moved to the other side of London Road but is now often closed. I spoke with the pie man there who said that it was a family-run enterprise (an aspect of these quaint pie shops that I admire) but that the ware was becoming less and less popular due to the rise of migrant in-comers in Barking and a world of other fast food shops. Already a lot of the outlets have quite literally shut up shop. I fearsomely hope that it will still be eaten in 50 years' time by pie enthusiasts.

Last year I set out to visit G Kelly's Pie & Mash shop on the Bethnal Green Road which someone had once recommended as the best pie shop in London. The pie shop was good and I liked the fact that it is still a family-run business. My own favourite one was Goddard's in Greenwich which closed down recently. It was a very atmospheric place, the pies were really big and tasty and worth the few bob that they cost. Kelly's in Bethnal Green is supposed to look Victorian but it doesn't, it looks very 1970s!

The Pie & Mash shop in Romford remains my all-time favourite which is just brilliantly built with the niches that one can sit and eat in and there is a good 'un in Upney I used to frequent.  The Ilford shop is also good but they have very peculiar-tasting liquor which no other shop does.It's great to see Robin's and Roy's opening in Havering recently. The area seems to be bucking the trend with this traditional meal; I regularly see queues outside both on a Saturday.  To those of you who are yet to try, pop into your local Pie & Mash restaurant this week. You won't regret it!

 

© Rehan Qayoom, 21 March 2008.  Published in Community     

    Times, Romford.  (June/July 2008).