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Enjoying Eels, Pie and Mash In London
Rate it! Votes (1) | Comments (0) By Carol Pucci and Andrew Denny Posted August 6th, 2007 FabulousFoods.com Recommends: Oddball Colorado: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places (Oddball series), by Jerome Pohlen, (2002, Chicago Review Press)	Oddball Colorado: A Guide to Some Really Strange Places (Oddball series)

LONDON, England - Chris Cooke wipes his hands on his blue and white striped apron and peers out his window at the traffic along Kingsland High Street in the heart of London's East End. The lunch rush has just ended, and Cooke looks exhausted. But when I ask him about competition from the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet across the street from the restaurant started by his grandfather 86 years ago, he reaches into a pan of water, grabs a shiny black eel with both hands, and gives me a big smile.

Stewed and jellied eels, steak and kidney pot pies and mashed potatoes doused in a parsley gravy called "liquor'' are being rediscovered by everyone from office workers to tourists in search of an off-beat London experience.

Steeped in Cockney culture, business is brisk at F. Cooke's and other traditional London :eel pie and mash'' houses as comfort food makes a comeback.

"It's plan and simple grub,'' says Jon Smith, a 37-year-old graphic designer who last year founded the Pie 'n' Mash Club of Great Britain, along with his father, Jim, 67, a retired cabby. The club was formed to boost support for London's 80 or so remaining eel, pie and mash _ traditional eating houses that have been catering to the culinary fancies of the working class since the mid-1800s.

The shops, many now run by third and fourth-generation families such as Chris and his brother Fred, have survived two world wars, soaring rents, changing eating habits, even mad-cow disease.

To step into F. Cooke's is to travel back in time. The walls are decorated with blue, white and green tiles, ornate mirrors and photos of famous customers. Seated on wooden benches, customers hunch over white marble tables, splashing their eels and pies with vinegar as they hold down their food with a fork and cut it with a spoon (no knives are provided).

On busy weekends, customers still line up at a take-out window for jars of eels - the specialty of the house since 1910 when Chris' grandfather, Frederick, walked up and down Kingsland High street handing out pennies to entice people into his shop. Nothing costs just a penny, of course, but an order of eels is still only $2, and a whole meal, including a hot steak and kidney pie, mashed potatoes, a ladle of ``liquor'' and a side of eels - costs about $5.50.

Robert Cooke, Chris and Fred's great-grandfather, opened his first shop in the late1800s, making the Cookes the oldest established family in the business. Today most of London's pie and mash houses are run by various members of the Cooke family and two other original families _ the Manzies and the Kellys, according to photographer Chris Clunn who spent five years documenting the shops and the people in them for his book, Eels, Pie and Mash, published by the Museum of London last year.

"When you look back on it, we were the original fast food,'' says Chris Cooke, a beefy, ruddy-cheeked man who at 52, clearly still enjoys a bowl of stewed eels, a hot pie and a scoop of mashed potatoes. "Before McDonald's, before fish and chips, there were pies and mash.''

Half the reason to eat at a pie and mash shop is to sample the fare: the eels, cut up in half-inch chunks and boiled with salt and pimentos, taste a little like pickled herring. The other half is to admire the furnishings: wooden benches, marble tables, intricate tile work. Cooke's, with its stained glass skylights and art deco-style stenciling on the windows advertising "jars of hot or jellied eels to take away,'' has been pictured in books on London architecture, and is listed as a historic landmark.

During the 1930s, estimates are there were as many as 150 such shops scattered throughout London. Most of those remaining are in and around the East End, best known for its famous criminals like Jack the Ripper and it colorful Cockney street markets such as Petticoat Lane and the Brick Lane Sunday flea market.

"Wherever there was a street market, there was a pie and mash shop,'' says Chris Cooke. "They were meeting places.'' For many East Enders, that hasn't changed, says Jon Smith who's been keeping notes since the 1960s on shops he's visited, and recently published "Pie 'n' Mash, a Guide to Londoners Traditional Eating Houses.''

"You can walk in here and eat slowly and chat and pass the time of day, and you won't be hassled...,'' says Smith. "Here in London, at least there are still enclaves where people treat each other like real people. These shops are like communities in themselves."

Pies, a London tradition since Victorian times, were stuffed with eels until the fish grew scarce during World War II. Then minced meat became the standard filling. Today, most shops serve boiled eels as a side dish. Fred and Chris Cooke buy their eels fresh each week, and store them in the drawers of big, metal file cabinets pumped with recirculating water.

As for mad-cow disease, "It's all good hype for the media,'' Chris Cooke says, "but it doesn't deter me from continuing to use good British beef.'' His kidneys come from New Zealand or Canada, and his beef is from flanks. "The sort of beef we use I've always used for our own family Sunday lunch, and still do.''

The scare hasn't deterred members of the Pie 'n' Mash Club who meet Wednesday nights to eat pie and mash and reminisce. "Firstly it's all about quality ingredients,'' says Jon Smith. "You can't hide cheap meat in these pies.'' The clientele, he says, are too demanding.

When You Go
F. Cooke & Sons, at 41 Kingsland High St. (Tel: 171-354-2878) is about 15-minute bus ride from the Tower of London via Bus No. 243. The nearest underground station is Liverpool Street. Hours are Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays: 10 a.m.-7p.m., Thursdays: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. and Friday and Saturdays: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Carol Pucci is assistant business editor at The Seattle Times and a freelance travel writer with a special interest in exploring off-beat London. Andrew Denny is a London freelance writer who grew up eating pie and mash.

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