With advancing age has come a graceful acceptance of my latent Anglophilia. Much of this serenity owes to the creeping realization that proficiency in any of the continental languages is unlikely; consequently, a thwarted expatriate’s aspirations might as well be confined to areas where the Mother Tongue is spoken.
There but for chronic linguistic underachievement, I might have been a Czech, German or Belgian. Perhaps in my next life.
Yesterday (Saturday 25 January) Manze’s pie-and-mash shop on Deptford High Street in southeast London closed permanently. As The Economist observes, the capital’s pie-and-mash shops “are at risk of becoming as rare as Cockney rhyming slang.”
According to The Pie and Mash Club, a refuge for culinary aficionados, as few as 40 such shops remain in London. Around 300 operated in the mid-19th century, when the city was home to far fewer people.
The fare, sometimes referred to as the “original fast food”, has changed little over the years: an oval meat pie served with a generous helping of mashed potatoes, all swimming in a parsley gravy called “liquor”. Eels, which were once plentiful in the Thames, accompany the pie in either stewed or jellied form. The shops’ interiors are often as standardised as the menu. White tiles cover the walls and black-and-white photos of the original owners may hang behind the bar. Some establishments have sawdust-covered floors and long communal tables or benches.
The decline of pie and mash is attributed to the usual reasons, with high food costs (the Thames again supports edible eel, albeit far pricier than before) and rents, gentrification and changing tastes topping the list. So it was in 2013, when last we visited my wife’s ancestral homeland (her mother hailed from Plymouth in the West Country).
In particular, back then the A. Cooke’s Pie and Mash Shop in Shepherd’s Bush (in business since 1899; not to be confused with F. Cooke) was thought to be in imminent danger. In fact the the venerable on-premises shop subsequently ceased operations, although more than a decade later the firm continues to cook, ship and deliver its edibles.
This makes me happy. One day in London in 2013 provided time enough to eat at A. Cooke’s — and another bucket list item received its squiggly check mark. Here is the account I wrote at my former blog.
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