Reviews

THE PERFECT PIES OF PECKHAM

Comments (7)

30 March 2011

M Manze
105 high street
Peckham
SE15
020 7277 6181
www.manze.co.uk

Emma Ailes
news@southwarknews.org

Like most bright ideas, it all started with a drunken Friday night down the pub.

A heated debate about which is the best pie and mash shop in the borough somehow turned into a promise from one of the managing directors that the ‘News’ (aka muggins here) would investigate.

At first, I took this as a personal affront. I may look like I like eating pies (for some reason, squishing my lumps into lycra and perching atop an exercise bike for the duration of Eastenders has not yet resulted in the effortless Giselle Victoria Secrets circa 2002 figure I was anticipating), but actually I am a fully paid member of the tree-hugging, quiche-munching, sandal-and-sock-wearing veggie club. I have not had so much as a cocktail sausage in fifteen years.

Clearly, I was not qualified for the assignment in hand, so I called for back up in the (spherical) shape of Bermondsey’s top Pie-Mash Consultants: half-brothers Mickey “the Mash Historian” Holland and Paul “the Pie Connoisseur” Burkett (self-titled).

The long-awaited Pie Thursday finally swung around and with £10 dinner money in my pocket we set off, Bruce Springsteen blaring out of the windows as we cruised down to Peckham Manzes in Paul’s convertible.

“Hands down, best pies in the borough,” Paul, who was dressed for the outing in Cockney-style cap and scarf, assured me.

“Although I don’t know what good it is sending a #^$%*! vegetarian to review it…”
We screeched to a halt on some double yellows round the corner and piled out, Mickey and Paul striding manfully ahead towards the promised pies while I skipped along behind.

The lunch queue was already spilling out of the famed M. Manze’s double doors, to which a notice was pinned
requesting ‘all customers to please keep their shirts on’. Who are these naked pie-eaters? I wondered, and scanned the room hopefully for rogue topless diners.

“One single with eels, one single on a big plate, and a…[cough]…vegetarian,” called Mickey to a voluptuous, tabard-clad woman with tattoos behind the counter, who turned and picked up a telephone on the wall to relay the offending vegetarian request to the engine room below.

While Paul said hello to some other regulars, Mickey filled me in on a bit of the history. The Manzes pie-mash dynasty began in 1902, he said, when a young Michael Manze of Italian descent married the daughter of East End pie king Robert Cooke. The Tower Bridge Road shop, now the oldest pie-mash shop in the world, was their wedding present.

Today, three M. Manze - Tower Bridge, Peckham and Sutton – have been handed down to three brothers, who use the same unaltered recipe passed through generations, including an obligatory special secret ingredient in the liquor (parsley sauce).

Our pies came out, “steaming hot, the way they should be”, mash scraped round one side and swimming in bright green liquor. Although mine looked no different, inside or out, I was reassured it was made with quorn mince.
Mickey grabbed a bottle marked ‘non-brewed condiment’ and dowsed his eels down. “Vinegar-flavoured water,” he explained with a grin.

“What’s in yours then, Ghandi? Give us a try,” said Paul. “That’s not half bad actually. If I didn’t know, I’d just say it was a bad meat pie.” Despite his half-approval, Pie Connoisseur Paul is actually a self-professed pie-mash purist:

“Proper pie and mash shops should keep the doors wide open all year round, even if you’re sitting in a bleedin’ blizzard, and they should just sell, pies, mash, liquor and eels. And Coca Cola. Anything else and it’s a café by my book,” he preached, as I scraped up my last bit of mash.

“And the second rule of pie and mash is that you don’t hang about. Let’s go.”
So, barely ten minutes after arriving, we were out the door again and swerving down the Old Kent Road, combination of parsley sauce and sharp bends turning me a little green in the chops.

“That was quick,” the editor said on my return. “How was it?”
Overall verdict? It was great. Pie Thursday, as it will come to be known, was the most lunchtime fun I’ve had this year. But as for which the best pie-mash shop in Southwark is, I’ll leave that to those experts of even greater girth to settle in the correct manner – with good, old-fashioned, drunken pub debate.

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Comments (7)

1. At 03:30 PM on 01 Apr 2011, Miss Rayner wrote:
I have to disagree with your boys. I went to Manze in Peckham - it was the worst pie mash I had ever eaten. The liquor was like slime, mash had so many lumps in it, pie was average, it is not somewhere I will frequent ever again. Arments is simply the best.
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2. At 05:37 AM on 06 Apr 2011, Chris wrote:
Two pies and mash, minimum, Arments is fantastic, as are most pie and mash shops. I live in Australia and am drooling, best food in the world. Jasp
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3. At 10:43 AM on 06 Apr 2011, Michael Holland wrote:
Miss Rayner, everyone has their favourite pie shop (Mine is Tower Bridge Road), and is usually the one you've been brought up with, but if Manze's in Peckham is the worst pie-mash you've ever had you ain't been to a lot of pie-mash shops. There are a lot of bad ones about.
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4. At 12:34 PM on 15 Apr 2011, Graham Neale wrote:
Bit disappointed they say they are using Quorn - They told me they were vegan (Quorn is made from battery hens'eggs) When I handed them an award back in 2004! Can't they use Soya mince for the veggie pies?
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5. At 12:42 PM on 20 Apr 2011, Claire wrote:
Never been to a pie and mash shop, despite walking past Arments every day for 7 years! The green stuff scares me, as do the eels but the pies are tempting. Might give Manze's a try now I live in Peckham... Oh and some people are allergic to soya mince (my daughter for one) - I think Quorn might be safer? Or maybe just veggies might be a good idea?
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6. At 08:49 PM on 20 Apr 2011, Michael Holland wrote:
I was informed by a reliable source that Quorn is made from a mushroom derivative. Battery hens' eggs! You're having a laugh, ain'tcha?
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7. At 07:16 PM on 24 Apr 2011, shaz wrote:
i love pie n mash soooooooooo much that after moving to Holland I learnt to make me own, love manzes's in tower bridge road, used to be out aylwin bus to manzes eat n bus back :), brilliant hope you have many many more years serving this brilliant grub
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