Category: Leytonstone

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.

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Posted in Bow, Eating, History, Leytonstone, London

Apr 18

Trees, you have been rumbled

Fake trees at Hollow Ponds

Faking it at Hollow Ponds

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Posted in Epping Forest, Leytonstone, Random, Wandering

Jun 30

Meze fun from Istanbul to Leytonstone

Well apologies again for the lengthy silence (but also many thanks to the 30 odd daily visitors checking out Sajarina even without any new posts – you rock my tiny webstat counting world!) As you might have guessed I have been further East than usual, to Istanbul. It rocked, in a big old buildings, iznik tiles, sunshine and baklava kind of a way, which is one of my favourite ways, truth be told.

Topkapi palace in Istanbul

One of the many things I love about London (and any ethnically diverse city I guess) is that you can go away on holiday, eat and drink tasty things and then find somewhere to buy them when you get home. So today I had lunch with a friend in the Meze Cafe on Church Lane in Leytonstone. I’ve been there a few times before and I like it a lot, from the prettily painted but distractingly phallic gourds hanging from the ceiling to the incredible tat-encrusted mirrors – it really is worth getting up close to these, the one I was next to today had a glow-in-the-dark star gluegunned onto it!

Though I’ve liked all the other stuff I’ve had there, I haven’t tried their meze platter yet. Today I was warned off it because it was too much for one person, and given the size of the house special salad they brought me instead I think they may have saved my life. I could have eaten myself into sweet auberginey oblivion, but instead I just pushed myself to the brink with broccoli, cauliflower, peas and almonds. Mmm. I had a satisfyingly dark and sludgy Turkish coffee as well, which with my friend’s latte and two gargantuan salads came to £10.90. They also do sandwiches, jacket potatoes and that sort of thing, as well as some hot dishes like moussaka for about £6. And it’s another of those wondrous unlicensed places, so you can bring your own alcohol, with no corkage.

This sort of thing makes me really happy. Although the rent in Leytonstone seems to be generally cheaper than in Stratford, I’ve moved from a shared house to solo living, and my disposable income has taken a knock. So far though, I’ve still been able to eat out pretty regularly because there are a few good, cheap options available, the Meze Cafe being one of them. Long may it live, and bring meze to the people!

PS Will be posting about Ichiban at some later date, and have already had a recommendation for the Singburi Thai. I’d love to hear any other suggestions!

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Posted in Drinking, Eating, Leytonstone

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.

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Posted in Bow, Craft, Leytonstone, Random