Old School - M. Manze

If you go to restaurants and eating places a lot, their appearance and menus can start to look a bit samey. M Manze, one of the few remaining traditional pie & mash shops in London, will take you on a proper little mini-break back in time, and feels more like stepping into another world than many places that consciously strive for that effect. Plus, a visit here is considerably cheaper than a visit to Bob Bob Ricard. And its not just the natural, time-worn, un-designed, old-fashioned appearance of the place that I like.

M Manze is full of older people, and they are welcome and at-home here. London spends a lot of time patting itself on the back about how far it has come as a city over the past twenty years, how culturally diverse it is, and how great the food is these days (and of course, I am as guilty of this as the next foodie), but it has some way to go when it comes to being properly inclusive of the old and the young in the way that seems so natural in, for instance, Asia or Southern Europe. One of the best things about New York is that you actually see people in their 80s eating alone or in couples in buzzy restaurants, in areas like the West Village. Restaurants should have grannies in them, and they should have children in them. Anyone who doesn’t like it can bugger off and found a Logan's Run-style community somewhere and live trendily ever after.

OK sorry, rant over. As I was saying, I like this place. The food? Well, the pies are the thing. Mmm pie. (Jellied eels, not so much.) Delicious and appetising pastry is the essential feature of a pie, and these babies have it in spades. You can forgive a bit with the filling if the pastry is done right. The mash, scraped onto the side of the plate in the traditional way, is proper mashed potato, the right thick texture for shepherd's pie or .. er .. pie & mash. Its not buttery and its not creamy, but it is potatoey, fresh and genuine (i.e. made of potatoes, unlike whatever it was I used to get served at school). Being a pie & mash shop, the food here is, as Michel Roux Jr might say, "not refined", but it is good wholesome comfort food, and just the thing if you are struck by hunger while browsing iPhone covers in the market. If you are really hungry you can have double pie & mash, or double pie & double mash, until you’re ready to quit. The liquor, yes, it is very bland, but inoffensive to my taste buds ... a bit like school dinner food.

I have heard people talk about other pie & mash shops that are supposed to be better than this one, but they always seem to be located in the middle of nowhere (i.e. South London somewhere), and frankly, I’m not prepared to travel that far for pie & mash, however good and however cheap. But if you offer me a nice hot pie in a proper old-school gaff, conveniently situated Up Chap (that is, for the benefit of any non-Islingtonians, in Chapel Market), I might just pop in once in a while.

 




 

M. Manze

74 Chapel Market
London N1 9ER