Category: Bow

Jan 07

A visit to G Kelly Noted Eel & Pie Shop

[This post has been restored following Website Death in 2009. It was originally posted in 2008 I think]

G Kelly Pie and Mash Shop on Roman Road - FrontageYesterday I went back to Roman Road market for the first time in a while and thought it was high time to post about G Kelly’s Noted Eel & Pie Shop.

It’s not up to me to tell you why pie and why mash and dear god why jellied eels. I’ll leave that up to the wonderful and terrifying www.eelhouse.co.uk, who offer a mail order pie service, and even pie and mash gift vouchers (‘the perfect gift!’)

Trying the pie and mash at G Kelly’s esteemed establishment was one of the first things I did when I moved to Bow, and although I did think that it was pretty bland (that’s obviously what the chilli vinegar is for…) it was hearty and cheap and peculiar. The interior of G Kelly seems to have been left mostly unchanged since the 1930s, all white tiles and mirrors and long wooden benches. On their website they have some fantastic history and a slideshow of old photographs.

They have a much more varied menu than other p&m shops I have visited, offering eels both stewed and jellied, soya mince vegetarian pies, mushy peas and even sweet pies and apple crumble with custard. The staff were friendly, and clearly amused at my confusion when offered ‘liquor’ on my pie – liquor is a thin green sauce made of parsley, rather than the bottle of gin I was momentarily expecting. (“Bargain!”, I thought.)

G Kelly gets busy at lunchtime on market days (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) often with queues out the door, as traders come in and put in incomprehensible orders like “one, two and peas, please love” (I think that’s one pie, two scoops of mash, and mushy peas). Saturday afternoons it’s a bit quieter.

My friend tries the eels

Jen and the eels

I think over the years I’ve had all kinds of their pies, but I have never gone near an eel. I am simply not brave enough. Have you seen what jellied eels look like?

Seriously. Step in my much braver friend Jen, who gamely tried some stewed eels with her mash. Apparently they were ok – fishy, squidgey, and yet full of bones. Yum.

There are quite a few pie and mash shops still dotted around East London, including one just down the road from me on Leytonstone High Road opposite Harrow Green. Writing this post is making me hungry, so perhaps I’ll stop in. Hm.

Before I sign off though, photographer Chris Clunn has a great collection of black and white photos of the exteriors, staff and customers in a selection of pie and mash shops.

0
comments

Posted in Bow, Eating, History, Leytonstone, London

Jun 09

Bromley-By-Bomb, someone in my shoes and fluffy insect love

On Friday night the unexploded WW2 device in Bow was detonated – I don’t have much to add to Going Underground’s post, which includes a dramatic still from a BBC video.

As I was leaving the house a few mornings ago a woman walked past wearing my shoes. Not just the same style from the same shop – actually my shoes, which I bought from the Dalston Oxfam shop, customised (badly) and then gave away to another charity shop. I was stunned, and she looked at me a bit oddly, probably because I was following her and gaping. Nobody needs that at 8.30 in the morning.

It made me happy though, because I thought I’d made a real mess of them, but she clearly didn’t think so! They were Converse, with a comic book print and white toes. I decided they would look better with black toes, so I coloured them in with permanent marker, leaving a star shape on one toe and writing “Pow!” inside. “How witty I am!” I thought to myself, and then realised I’d just hashed up a perfectly good pair of sneakers. Sigh.

It’s not the first time something like that has happened either – my friend customised a t-shirt and later donated it to the Tottenham branch of Sense, then I found it in the Hackney branch. I not sure whether this ‘small world’ business is comforting or depressing. Maybe a little bit of both.

In other news: I saw a bumblebee! From the top deck of a bus. It made me realise how seldom I see the fluffy little dears these days, and I made a mental note to stop mocking The Independent for devoting its cover to “The plight of the bumblebee“. Surely there’s some good bee-PR to be had from Harry Potter? That’s where ‘dumbledore‘ comes from after all.

2
comments

Posted in Bow, Craft, Leytonstone, Random

Mar 09

Suffragettery in Bow

In honour of International Women’s Day yesterday, and the fact that 2008 marks 90 years since UK women won the vote, I thought I’d post a little bit about Sylvia Pankhurst and the suffragettes of East London. There is suffragettery all over the place around here. As you walk out of the station you’ll see a fairly unremarkable-looking corner shop on the other side of the road opposite you. There are in fact two special things here:

  1. They have racks of fruit and veg outside which they light up with strange, appetite-killing blue and violet light at night.
  2. Above the shop is a box-shaped clock attached to the building by some spindly bits of metal.

The clock is a memorial to one of the East London suffragettes, Minnie Lansbury, who was elected to Poplar’s first Labour council in 1919. Minnie, along with other council members, spent 6 weeks in prison for failing to collect the full rates owed by the people of Poplar (Poplarians?) Bow police station is a little way down the road, where lots of the suffragettes were held after being arrested at demonstrations for breaching the peace, often in nearby Victoria Park. At one protest in 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst and 20 other women were marching to the park, linked to each other with chains, when they were ambushed by police who dragged them to the boating enclosure and smashed the padlocks, twisting the arms and tearing the hair of any women who tried to stop them.

Sylvia Pankhurst was dispatched to Canning Town by her formidable mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, in 1906, to win the support of the working women in the East. She set up the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, working from No. 400 Old Ford Road. The group didn’t just campaign and protest (and support pro-women’s suffrage MP George Lansbury, Minnie’s father-in-law and grandfather of Angela, yes, that Angela, a.k.a Jessica Fletcher) they also ran a hall for meetings and lectures, a cost-price restaurant, a mother and baby clinic, a day nursery, and a toy factory, as an early sort of fairtrade initiative. I find this tremendously impressive.

Emmeline (and her other daughter, Christabel) eventually became estranged from Sylvia, her East London suffragettes and her socialist, pacifist ideals. She stayed in the East, moving to Essex where she continued to campaign on a number of issues for the rest of her long life, much to the discomfort of the rest of Woodford. My grandparents lived in Woodford, and I can imagine them disapproving thoroughly. But then, they were terribly good at it.

Here’s a bit more Sylvia-lore for interested folks. You can also read some excerpts from her own record of her time in Bow on Home Made Jam. I also recommend Rosemary Taylor’s book Walks Through History: Exploring the East End (Amazon) which has a walk dedicated to the suffragettes. The wonderful Women’s Library in Aldgate also has a lot of walks featuring many of the kickass women of East London.

And finally, if you feel like thanking the women that fought so hard to win the vote, you can join the Fawcett Society, which was founded by suffragist Millicent Fawcett, and has been working for women and equality since 1866.

0
comments

Posted in Activism, Bow, Feminism, History, Human Rights, London, Politics

Mar 03

Banana latte lady

Click. Click… Click? Ah, the sweet sound of another power cut. Whenever this happens, and I get interweb withdrawal shakes, I head over to Roman Road market and to Chicchi internet cafe. I’m not sure exactly what their internet policy is now – it used to be if you bought anything over £1 then you could use the internet free for an hour. But when I was there last weekend I had been online for a good hour and a half before I noticed I’d overrun and nobody came to pester me.

This easygoing approach to internet time is just one thing among many that I love about Chicchi (pronounced ‘kikki’ apparently, the Italian for ‘beans’) As well as excellent, tasty and reasonably priced pasta and salads, you can buy intriguing teas with exciting names. Clear favourites in the name stakes are Gunpowder Qing and China White Jade Butterfly. Who wouldn’t want a cup of tea that sounds like part of a kickass crime-fighting team?

Chicchi also takes milkshakes to a whole new level. Strawberry, chocolate, banana? Sure, they’re there, for your casual milkshake drinker. For the ever-so-slightly-more-adventurous there is delicious coconut or dashing hazelnut. But the milkshake drinking pro you can wet their whistle with peach & vanilla, pistachio & hazelnut, or chocolate & cinnamon. Even sick milkshake obsessives are catered for with a strange mutant creation: chocolate & strawberry. That’s right. In the SAME GLASS. If you think that sounds exciting, you should see their waffle menu. Take a moment to let that sink in. Waffle. Menu. I’m just going to link right to it.

The lovely Chicchi people (and they are lovely – smiley and friendly) take a similar approach to their coffee. It is damn fine coffee, needless to say, but I like strange flavours in mine. And rather than pedestrian hazelnut, cinnamon, vanilla etc… I can walk right into this little cafe and order a banana latte, without shame, without needing to explain myself, or meet the confused and pitying gaze of some hapless barista. Not here. It’s up on the board, on their list of syrups, as is coconut. Is there a greater joy than feeling accepted, and loved like this?

Also a brief little shoutout to AMT Coffee (they have a stand in Liverpool Street station, so it counts as east endy) I heart you! You make similar strange concoctions such as banana lattes, hot apple with cinnamon, cherry flavoured yogushakes and the adorable froffee. And, at the request of your customers, you went completely fairtrade years ago, way before it was cool. If there is one thing that would improve Chicchi for me it would be fairtrade coffee. Happy fairtrade fortnight!

0
comments

Posted in Bow, Drinking, Eating, London, Tea