The Kitchen
Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.
13 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks
London drinks standing up. The pub is the unit of measure: you order at the bar, you pay by the round, and nothing arrives unasked except the bag of crisps somebody tore down the seam and laid flat in the middle of the table. Food is a decision, not a courtesy. A scotch egg and a pickled onion at six, a ploughman's if you're settling in, a salt beef beigel at three because the pub shut hours ago. There is no special word for it. It's just pub snacks.
Jellied Eels · London
Cold eel set in its own jelly, eaten standing up with a plastic fork. The jelly is the point. Sharp with chili vinegar, salty, faintly medicinal. Half of London finds it revolting. The other half grew up on it.
Where you'd actually eat it: Eel and pie shops from Bermondsey to Hackney, and the cockle stall outside the pub on a Sunday night. Goes with a light bitter or a mug of tea, nothing that fights the vinegar.
From behind the bar: Ask the fishmonger for skinned eel in rounds. If the stock will not set on its own, bloom a teaspoon of gelatin per cup and never mention it again.
Pie & Mash · London
Minced beef in a hard little pastry case, mash smeared on with a knife, green parsley liquor poured over the lot. Marble counters, tiled walls, sawdust on the floor once. Cheap fuel before a long session.
Where you'd actually eat it: Manze's, Cooke's, the Noted, and the other surviving eel and pie houses of Peckham, Hoxton and Leytonstone. Lunchtime and early evening trade. Tea in the shop, then a pint of bitter next door.
From behind the bar: The liquor should coat a spoon, not stand up on it. If it stiffens as it cools, slacken it with hot stock before it hits the plate.
Döner Kebab · London
Shaved lamb, pitta, shredded salad, chili sauce and garlic mayo, bagged and eaten walking. The 2am kebab is a London institution and nobody has ever ordered one sober. The home version tastes better and looks worse.
Where you'd actually eat it: Turkish shops on Green Lanes and on every high street after midnight. The ocakbasi charcoal grills are the good version, the spinning elephant leg is the honest one. Drink: Efes, or the lager you already had.
From behind the bar: Chill the cooked loaf hard before slicing, because warm it just tears. Cut it thin as paper and crisp it in a dry pan, no oil.
Devilled Kidneys · London
Lamb kidneys hit hard in a hot pan, then devilled with mustard, Worcestershire and cayenne. Iron, butter, heat. Victorian bar food that never really left. Offal is still the cheapest thing in the butcher's window.
Where you'd actually eat it: Old City chophouses and the offal-minded pubs around Clerkenwell, served on fried bread at the bar. Cuts straight through beer. Drink: dark mild, rough claret, or a large sherry if you are being honest.
From behind the bar: Do not crowd the pan and do not cook them past pink. Kidneys go from tender to rubber in about thirty seconds and there is no way back.
Pickled Eggs · London
A jar of them on the back bar, gone brown in malt vinegar. Order one, tip it into an open bag of crisps, crush, eat with your fingers. Sulphur and acid. Not a good idea, and the correct order.
Where you'd actually eat it: Any pub that still keeps a jar, which means carpet, no menu and a dartboard. Late afternoon, one pint in. Drink: bitter or a cheap lager. Not wine, obviously.
From behind the bar: Prick every egg with a skewer or the middles stay bland and rubbery. Keep the jar in the fridge, not on a warm shelf behind the bar.
sausage roll · London
Seasoned pork in butter puff pastry, baked until the layers shatter. Sold everywhere, done properly almost nowhere. Brown sauce is permitted. Ketchup is a choice you will have to live with.
Where you'd actually eat it: Any pub with a warming cabinet, and the good ones at butchers like the Ginger Pig. Bought at the counter, eaten off a napkin, washed down with a bitter or a cold lager.
From behind the bar: Chill before it goes in the oven. Warm pastry gives you a flat greasy tube instead of layers.
pork pie · London
Hand-chopped pork in hot water crust, eaten cold with the jelly still set. It looks like an afternoon of work because it is. Piccalilli on the side, and don't warm it up.
Where you'd actually eat it: Melton Mowbray makes the famous one, London eats it. On a ploughman's plate or quartered on the bar with a pot of piccalilli. Pale ale, cold pie, no debate.
From behind the bar: The jelly is not decoration. It fills the gap the meat leaves as it shrinks and stops the pie drying to sand.
ploughman's lunch · London
Cheddar, ham, bread, pickle, a whole pickled onion, cold apple. No cooking, just judgment. Sold to the country by the cheese marketing board in the fifties and completely real by now.
Where you'd actually eat it: Cheese Bureau marketing from the fifties and sixties that stuck; the phrase itself is older. Ordered at lunchtime in a proper boozer, over a pint of cask bitter and most of an afternoon.
From behind the bar: Branston or nothing. Keep the pickled onions whole — halved, they go limp and weep vinegar into the cheese.
potted shrimps · London
Small brown shrimp set in spiced butter, scraped hot onto toast. Mace does the work. It's a preserving trick from about 1800 that turned into the most civilized thing on a bar menu.
Where you'd actually eat it: Sweetings, Bentley's, and any pub that thinks about its menu. Ordered first, with a glass of Chablis or a very cold lager, before the table has agreed on anything else.
From behind the bar: Morecambe Bay brown shrimp are hard to find outside the UK. Small cooked cold-water shrimp are the honest substitute. Tiger prawns are not — wrong texture, wrong sweetness.
cockles · London
A pot of cooked cockles under malt vinegar and white pepper, eaten off a cocktail stick. Sour, chewy, salty. The last surviving piece of the East End seafood stall trade.
Where you'd actually eat it: Sellers worked pub to pub on a Sunday, and Tubby Isaacs' stall at Aldgate lasted until 2013. What's left is Borough Market and the odd stall. Take the pot back to your stout.
From behind the bar: Jarred cockles in brine are what most stalls actually use. Rinse them, drain hard, and dress with fresh vinegar at the last minute or they go slack.
Welsh rarebit · London
A thick savory cheese paste, spread on toast and blistered under the broiler. Not cheese on toast. The mustard and the stout are what make it worth the extra pan.
Where you'd actually eat it: St John serves a proper one and the flat version is on half the bar menus in town. Eaten with a glass of claret or a dark ale, always about forty degrees too hot.
From behind the bar: Worcestershire hides anchovy and some cask stout is fined with isinglass, which is fish. Check both bottles, and use microbial-rennet cheddar.
chips and curry sauce · London
Double-fried chips under thick yellow chip-shop curry sauce. Not a starter and not a side. This is the thing you eat after the drinking, out of paper, standing up.
Where you'd actually eat it: Chip shop on the walk home, or a pub with a proper fryer and no shame. Wrapped in paper, eaten standing, and it will be the last clear memory of the night.
From behind the bar: Most chip shop curry sauce is vegan, but some brands carry milk powder or ghee. Read the tub before you assume anything.
Roast Marrow Bones · London
Beef leg bones split lengthways and roasted until the marrow goes loose and glossy. Scrape it onto hot toast, pile on parsley and shallot, salt it hard. Pure fat. The bones cost next to nothing and taste like they cost plenty.
Where you'd actually eat it: Smithfield and Farringdon pubs, and every bar counter that copied St John. Ordered standing, one plate between two, early evening. Drink: a rough red, a porter, or something cold and white to cut the fat.
From behind the bar: Watch the last five minutes. There is about a two-minute window between loose marrow and an empty bone sitting in a tray of hot fat.