Pie, mash and liquor: the plate London made, and where to eat it

A pie and mash at M. Manze on Tower Bridge Road costs £6.55: a minced beef pie in handmade pastry, a scoop of mash and a ladle of liquor, the green parsley sauce that was traditionally made with the water the eels were cooked in. It is the one plate that belongs to London and nowhere else.

The first known pie-and-mash shop was Henry Blanchard’s in Southwark, in 1844. By the end of that century there were about 110 in London. In 2024 there were 34. Jellied eels, cheap Thames eels chopped, boiled in spiced stock and left to set, came from the same East End kitchens in the 18th century, but the European eel is now critically endangered, and most people who order eels today are ordering history.

How we chose: the shops that still cook these dishes daily, checked against their own sites and Time Out’s 2026 pie-and-mash and cheap-eats lists.

M. Manze

Michele Manze bought his father-in-law’s Bermondsey shop in 1902, and the family opened a second in Peckham in 1927. Tower Bridge Road is the one to visit, for the Victorian green tiles as much as the pie. There is a soya-mince vegan pie for anyone who wants the liquor without the beef, and eels are still on the board. Time Out puts it first among London’s pie shops.

Tower Bridge Road, Bermondsey · pie and mash £6.55 · closes 6pm Mon–Thu, 3pm Sun · walk-in

Beigel Bake

The other London plate is salt beef, and the place to eat it is a bakery on Brick Lane that never shuts. Order the salt beef beigel, hot, with mustard; it is £8.30 on the shop’s own site. The ovens turn out about 7,000 beigels a day; take a bag of plain ones home.

Brick Lane · salt beef beigel £8.30 · open 24 hours · walk-in

Tongue & Brisket

If you want salt beef sitting down, go to Leather Lane. Tongue & Brisket grew out of the B&K Salt Beef Bar, which traded for nearly 50 years, and serves its salt beef on rye with pickle and sauerkraut for under £10.

Leather Lane, Holborn · salt beef on rye under £10 · Mon–Fri 7:30am–4pm, Sat 10am–3pm · walk-in

Rock & Sole Plaice

London’s other working dish, fish and chips, has been fried on Endell Street since 1871, the year this Covent Garden shop gives as its founding. Order the cod loin: £23 for 230g, £27 for 310g. A 10% service charge is added.

Endell Street, Covent Garden · cod and chips from £23

Checked October 2026.