Today sees another pie and mash shop bring down its shutters for a last time – Manze’s, of all people, in Deptford, of all places. Here in Croydon, though, Cockneys is good for a few years yet, as KEN TOWL discovered with a bowl of eels, and more, this week
Welcome to a bygone age: Cockney’s of Croydon, on Frith Road
“Is that tea too strong for you?” Debbie said, as she plonked a mug of steaming hot builder’s tea down on the white marble table top beside a builder. The builder, in his builder’s hi-viz work clothes, seemed happy enough with the strength of his tea.
We are in Cockneys of Croydon, thought to be the last remaining pie and mash shop in the whole of the borough. It is, for now at least, surviving.
A walk down Surrey Street market just after noon on a Saturday takes you past a 30-strong queue for Adrian’s artisan bread stall, a van selling Turkish coffee, the Asian veg stall with its bewildering array of produce and a vendor selling “genuine” Mauritian food.
But as you leave one of London’s oldest street markets and cross the tramlines on Church Street, then take a sharp right at Frith Road, you can enter a bygone age by stepping into Cockneys, all white tiles and union jack bunting.
The bourgeoisification of the high street hospitality trade is an unstoppable, relentless force. There are outposts of resistance, but while embattled fish and chip shops fight on, pie and mash shops like Cockneys are, one by one, hoisting the white flag.
Final days: Manze’s in Deptford (photographed in a snowier January) closes for a final time today
All over the capital, the shutters are coming down on these vendors of traditional London food. There are about 40 left across Greater London. Just before Christmas, Harringtons Eel And Pie House on Tooting’s Selkirk Road, where they had been trading for 116 years, closed.
The latest casualty of this class war is Manze’s, a giant in the pie, mash and eel trade. Their shop on Deptford High Street closes today, when the last of the pies run out.
It’s the same old story. The owner of the shop reaches retirement age but the next generation sees no future in the business.
“Are you the one who ordered the vegetarian pie?” Max asks as we approach his counter in Cockneys. This website’s Editor, who has accompanied me on this piece of essential research, seemed offended by the very assumption.
Max reckons he is one of the youngest piemen still in the business, and he is 58.
He tells me that his two grown-up children have their own careers and aspirations and do not want a lifetime of pie-making and eel-stewing at Cockneys in Croydon.
“I’ve got a few years left in me yet,” Max asserts.
Tall order: you don’t need to ‘duck ‘n dive’ on Frith Road, where orders are taken and service is prompt amid the white tiles and slang slogans of Cockneys
So Max will carry on and then that will be that. Otherwise, the closest options to get your jellied eel fix will be Manze’s at 226 Sutton High Street or another Cockneys, at 44 Chatterton Road, Bromley. Assuming, of course, that those outlets are still going.
All the more reason, then, to take your place on the wooden benches at Cockneys of Croydon, like I did this week, and keep giving Max a reason to get up in the morning to handcraft a pile of pies and mash a load of potatoes.
Accompanying me on my eat-pies-while-you-can mission was Steven Downes, Inside Croydon’s Editor.
He claims his first encounter with pie and mash was before he was even born, when his south Londoner nan took his Welsh mum to Arments on Westmoreland Road. It was long enough ago that pie shops then still had stalls outside with basins of live eels on sale, as well as the cooked ones inside.
The works: pie, eels and mash, with liquor and a special brew of chilli vinegar
As Steven tells it, even the sight of someone eating jellied eels was enough to make his pregnant mother feel queasy. All these years later, there was no sign of such queasiness when the Editor had his plate brought to our table by Debbie.
We both opted for pie, mash and eels, the works, as it were, and Debbie brought us mugs of builders’ tea, too, the perfect accompaniment.
Only after we ate did I notice that Sarsaparilla was available too, something I hadn’t seen on any menu since I had found myself in a temperance bar in Cardiff more than 40 years ago.
Anyway, the tea was good and strong.
And the pies? Well, Max makes a decent pie, full of savoury, meaty flavour, wrapped in a comfort blanket of two kinds of pastry and the liquor (as we have to call the parsley sauce you get in pie shops) has just the right amount of herbal kick to add interest to the scoops of mash. Steven dashed some special chilli vinegar on his bowl, insisting it is essential.
I was less convinced by the eels. As a stewed eel virgin, I did not really know what to expect from these long, slithery, rubbery-skinned denizens. I really don’t mind picking the meat from the spines of fish in order to get at the lean bits, but I just enjoyed the pie a lot more. I might try the jellied eels next time. Still, I cleared my bowl, and Steven cleared his.
The bill for both of us, eating at the top end of the menu, came to a modest £25.50 and the proudly proletarian sustenance kept us full for the rest of the day.
You’ll miss it when it’s gone: Cockneys is a part of London market heritage
This is the real deal.
Max has been making pies for decades. He started out and learnt to be a pieman at Simple Simon’s in Peckham when he was 14 years old. His traditional white-tiled, wooden-benched shop at 51, Frith Road is not retro. It just hasn’t been modernised. In the 25th year of the 21st Century, he doesn’t even take payments by card. “Cash only” says the sign above the counter, next to the Sarsaparilla stand.
Fortunately, for me at least, Downes had come prepared.
Cockney’s is a family business, not a corporate unit, and the people who work there, Frank, Debbie and Max himself, are there because they want to be.
Next time you are in the centre of town, give the artesan bread queue a miss and maybe pass on the Turkish coffee, and instead pop in for a pie (or two).
You know you’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Read more: Frith Road pie shop that’s keeping cockney tradition alive
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Tasty! Thanks Ken. IC’s hipster cockneys should know that pie and mash is available from a van outside the Whyteleafe Tavern on Fridays. That’s opposite the Radius Arms, if you’re interested
Manze’s in sutton high street and Harringtons at tooting broadway lovely jubbly, go on fill yer boots, double pie & double mash with the parsley sauce ” Liquor to the uninitiated” will see you through the day.
I was reminded during the recording of the latest Croydon Insider podcast that for the past 10 years or so, Max of Cockneys has, every Tuesday when he has closed up his shop, allowed Jose Joseph, the fruit and veg stall owner from Surrey Street to come inside and use his kitchen and equipment to cook food which is then distributed outside to the homeless, poor and vulnerable.
Without Max’s help, Jose’s charity work would be very difficult, if not impossible.
So thank you Max, and thank you Jose.
*That* is proper community. Something in which to take real pride.
My grandfather first took me for pie and mash when I was five and I loved it. I was not a fan of eels or Liquor then. As a teen I liked the one in East Street market. Working in Edward st many of my colleagues loved to visit Deptford for a pie and mash lunch with liquor (still not a fan of jellied eel) so that was a regular go to spot also.
Cockneys? I was not even sure it was still there, thank you for reminding me.
Another fear-mongering article incorrectly announcing the death of pie-mash. The truth is that there are more pie-mash shops now than there was hundred years ago. The only difference is that they have moved out with the Londoners. As one closes here two open in the Home Counties.
Plus, the main players (Arment & Manze) have franchises in the provinces where fans can get the real thing on a regular basis. The pies and liquor are delivered by the expert piemen and the caff makes the mash. I’ve tried several and the only thing I don’t like is eating mine alongside people with fry-ups.
Plus, both dynasties provide a delivery service all over the UK.
So even though the original pie shops might slowly close, London’s original fast food will live on through those adherents who will never let it die.