Eel Pie and Mash: Don’t Let the Punctuation Fool You

When we’re in a new place, we make sure to try the food special to it. In the UK that is pub grub. We love meat pies, so we were thrilled when we heard about eel pie! This is a dish once enormously popular with the working classes on the East Side of Victorian London. Eels were once very common in the Thames, being one of the few things that could survive the pollution and therefore, a cheap and good source of protein.

Given the importance of pies in general to our well-being, we rushed to try the famous eel pie. The place to do this is M. Manze on the south side of the Thames. (F. Cooke is another option.) It was an educational trip, but our meal was ever so slightly disappointing. First, the eels are not in the pie; they come next to it, with a mince/ground beef pie and mash. Apparently, at least nowadays, it is not ‘eel pie and mash’ but ‘eel, pie, and mash’. This mis-punctuation confirms us in our life-long obsession with grammar: lives can be ruined by a comma in the wrong place! We were really excited to try eel pie, i.e. eels IN a pie. Some of this is our fault: the online pictures, including at M. Manze, show eels and pie. In our greed we simply didn’t look closely enough.

Eel Pie Mash Taste Test

After this heartbreak, a further blow: the food was bland. The famed ‘eel liquor’ in which the eels are served is thickened, probably by the collagen in their skins (but don’t quote us) and flavoured with parsley. It becomes a thick and soupy gravy, in which stewed eels are served. Liquor also accompanies the mash. We were told to add pepper sauce and vinegar. These gave it additional flavour (we added lots of salt and pepper too), but all in all it was a fairly unexciting meal. The eels had a good texture – they are less fishy than most fish – and the central bones were easy to find and remove. Note: as an alternative to eels in liquor, you can order jellied eels, which do not have the liquor and which are an (even more) acquired taste for most westerners because of the consistency. Their flavour is not much different from stewed eels.

The pie was small but tasty. Perhaps not tasty enough for the effort we expended seeking it out; we’ve had much better ones all over Britain. (As Woody Allen would say, and such small portions.) The mash was also acceptable, but nothing special. Then again, the meal was not an expensive one. We arrived just before the lunch rush, which was mostly groups of men who looked like they worked in construction. So at least it remains a local place as well as a draw for tourists. Speaking of neighborhoods, this was not our best eel-eating experience, but the highlight of the trip was our new favourite London neighborhood, Bermondsey. Read more about it here.

Summary:

If you already like eels, you will probably like eel and pie. But you might be better off trying eels for the first time in a more flavourful dish, like anything Japanese.