A heavenly combination.
It was a hot Fathers’ Day Sunday, and the restaurants, cafes and bars were filling up, feeding tourists and locals alike. I liked the look of Fuckoffee, but I wanted more than caffeine. I loved the intimate Casse-Croute but I wasn’t in the mood for French. I wanted down-to-earth Cockney fare and Manze’s was just a little further on Tower Bridge Road. Picture the scene…tiled walls, marble tabletops, wooden benches like church pews, a cluster of vinegars and condiments…it could only be Manze’s, where classic pie and mash is served with lashings of green liquor, seven days a week. There was a steady flow of customers despite the local competition and my ‘one pie, one mash and liquor’ did not disappoint.
It’s been many years since I’ve tucked into this cuisine. Five years ago, I visited Cockney’s Pie and Mash in the Portobello Road. The food was tasty but the mash was served with a potato scoop, and gravy was offered as an alternative to liquor…
A month earlier, the Old Bank of England pub in Fleet Street served a selection of pies with a passable liquor for a graduation celebration but despite the ornate pub interior, it didn’t match Manze’s.
Chapel Market (or Chapel Street Market as I knew it) was where I tasted my first pie and mash as a kid, and then eels and mash. Situated near Angel, Islington, the street was also home to, and well-known for, Manze’s from 1902 (now closed, but only in 2019). I remember seeing people checking out the live eels, and buying them prepped (heads off) and ready to cook at home.
At any Manze’s restaurant you sit up straight on those wooden pew-like benches, you might share a table with other diners, and you might be lucky, or unlucky, to get that table at the front of the restaurant that’s only just deep enough for the plate and is facing a wall. But let’s get on with the review. The pie was the traditional two types of pastry – flaky on top, a denser water pastry below – housing moist minced beef; the potato was scraped onto the side of the plate (that’s the way to do it) and the dish was finished off with a ladle of parsley liquor. Settled at an unoccupied table and having applied lashings of vinegar to the pie and liquor, I sank into gastronomic heaven, thanks to the umami effect.