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.
38 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.
Battered Sav and Chips · London
A bright red sausage dunked in chip-shop batter, chips, curry sauce in a tub. No apology anywhere in it. This is 11:40pm food, eaten from the paper on a bus stop bench with vinegar running down your wrist.
Where you'd actually eat it: Any chippy from Deptford to Dagenham, ordered after last orders. The curry sauce is a chip shop invention and it is not Indian food. Drink: whatever is left in the can on the walk home.
From behind the bar: Fry the chips twice: 275F/135C to cook them, 375F/190C to color them. One fry gives you limp chips and a sad walk home.
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.
Crispy Pig's Ears · London
Simmered soft, pressed cold, cut into ribbons and fried until they buckle and crunch. Cartilage down the middle, crisp at the edges. Salt and vinegar, nothing else. The cheapest part of the pig, sold as a bar snack.
Where you'd actually eat it: The offal-minded bars around Columbia Road, Bermondsey and Soho put these out by the bowl. Drink: dry cider, fino sherry, or a cold lager. Anything that resets your mouth for the next handful.
From behind the bar: Dry the strips on paper for ten full minutes before frying. Wet cartilage dropped in hot oil spits like a firework and it will find your forearm.
Black Pudding · London
Blood sausage sliced thick and fried until the outside cracks. Fat, oats, iron, pepper. English mustard and a pickled onion, no plate required. Cheap, dark, and better than it has any right to be.
Where you'd actually eat it: Butchers' shops and pub kitchens across the city. Northern by origin, eaten everywhere in London by the lunchtime drinkers. Drink: a pint of bitter, or a stout if it is raining, which it is.
From behind the bar: Wait for a dry crust before you flip. Poking it apart halfway through frying gives you black pudding gravel and a pan you will hate.
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.
Crisp Butty · London
Two slices of white, cold salted butter, a packet of crisps in the middle, pressed until it cracks. No toasting. No good bread. Drunk food, kid food, closing-time food. The only way to ruin it is by trying.
Where you'd actually eat it: Made in the kitchen at 1am when the kebab shop is too far, or handed over the bar in a lock-in. Cheese and onion is standard, salt and vinegar is for people who want to feel something. Drink: whatever you carried home.
From behind the bar: Butter to the edges and press with your palm, not a plate. You want the crisps broken into shards, not crushed into powder.
Patum Peperium · London
Anchovy and butter beaten to a paste so salty it comes with instructions: scrape it, do not spread it. Hot white toast, crusts off. The commercial jar dates to 1828 and the recipe is still secret. This is the honest approximation.
Where you'd actually eat it: Club rooms, old hotel bars and any pub with a cheese board and a sherry list. Served as a savoury at the end, when the eating has stopped but the drinking has not. Drink: dry sherry, or a martini.
From behind the bar: Salt-packed anchovies rinsed well beat oil-packed every time. If you use oil-packed, drain them properly or the butter splits into a grey mess.
Smoked Mackerel Pâté · London
Hot-smoked mackerel mashed with soft cheese, horseradish and lemon. Smoke, fat, acid. Five minutes of work and it will sit on the bar all night without complaining. Toast, cornichons, black pepper, done.
Where you'd actually eat it: Riverside pubs and the good back-street ones, chalked up between the scotch egg and the soup. Early evening, in a bowl for the table. Drink: cold cider, a dry white, or a pale ale.
From behind the bar: Mash it with a fork, never a blender. Pâté made in a machine goes gluey and ends up tasting of absolutely nothing.
چانپ (chaamp) · London
Chops marinated in yogurt, ginger and green chili, then blasted until charred outside and pink at the bone. Grease on your fingers, lemon squeezed over, raw onion alongside. Ordered by the plateful, not the portion.
Where you'd actually eat it: The Punjabi grill houses of Whitechapel, Tayyabs and its neighbors, bring your own, queue down the pavement, tables loud enough to shout across. Drink: cans of lager carried in from the offie.
From behind the bar: Hotter than you think and shorter than you think. If your grill will not roar, use cast iron on full heat and open every window in the flat.
Suya · London
Beef sliced thin, skewered, grilled hard and dusted in yaji, a rub of ground peanut, chili and ginger. Dry, dusty, brutally hot. Sold through a hatch off a smoking grill and eaten on the pavement with your fingers.
Where you'd actually eat it: The suya spots along Rye Lane in Peckham and the Old Kent Road, busiest late and loudest later. Wrapped with raw onion and a fistful of extra yaji. Drink: Star, Gulder, or a cold Guinness Foreign Extra.
From behind the bar: Blot the ground peanuts on paper before mixing the rub. Oily yaji clumps into paste and will not dust properly over the meat.
Stamp and Go · London
Salt cod, scotch bonnet, scallion and thyme in a loose batter, spooned straight into hot oil. Crisp edges, soft middle, salty enough to keep you drinking. Jamaicans call them stamp and go, for eating on your feet.
Where you'd actually eat it: Caribbean counters and takeaway hatches around Brixton and Peckham, sold in threes in a paper bag. Drink: Red Stripe, or a rum and Ting if the night is clearly going somewhere.
From behind the bar: Taste the soaked cod before it goes anywhere near the batter. Still aggressive means another few hours in fresh water, no arguing.
椒鹽雞翼 (ziu yim gai yik) · London
Wings fried hard in cornstarch, then thrown through garlic, chili and spring onion with a heavy hand of white pepper and salt. Greasy, loud, ordered at 1am under strip lighting by people who should be in bed.
Where you'd actually eat it: Chinatown's late kitchens off Gerrard Street, the ones still cooking when Soho has given up. Shared over a pot of tea and warm lager. Drink: Tsingtao, or the tea, or both at once.
From behind the bar: Dredge, rest five minutes, dredge again. The second coat is what makes the wings sound right when you bite into one.
Scotch egg · London
Boiled egg in a jacket of sausage meat, breadcrumbed and fried. The whole argument is the yolk: soft in the middle, or you have made a meatball. Cut in half at the bar so everyone can see you got it right.
Where you'd actually eat it: Fortnum & Mason claim it, 1738. You eat it standing at the bar with a pint of bitter, cut in half, mustard on the side. Half of London's better pubs make their own now.
From behind the bar: The second breading coat is not optional. One coat splits in the oil and you lose the yolk to the fryer.
pork scratchings · London
Pork skin, dried hard, rendered slow, then blasted until it blisters. Salt, fat and violence. The bar-clip snack that has broken more teeth than any pint glass.
Where you'd actually eat it: Black Country by birth, London by distribution. Comes in a blue bag off the clip behind the bar, eaten with a dark mild or a bitter, dentistry at your own risk.
From behind the bar: Overnight drying does all the real work. Wet skin steams in the oven and you end up with pork chews.
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.
devils on horseback · London
Prunes wrapped in bacon and roasted until the fat crisps. Sweet, salty, gone in one. The angels are oysters; these are the ones you can actually make on a Tuesday.
Where you'd actually eat it: A Victorian savory course that came back with the bar-snack revival. Handed round with dry sherry or a dark ale, standing, before dinner is a real plan.
From behind the bar: Use a rack over a tray. Sitting in their own rendered fat, the undersides never crisp and you get bacon-flavored steam.
whitebait · London
Tiny whole fish, floured with cayenne and fried hard. Heads, tails, the lot. Once a whole Victorian ritual on the Thames, now the thing you order first while the table decides.
Where you'd actually eat it: The Greenwich whitebait dinners ran into the 1890s and the Trafalgar Tavern still serves the fish. Riverside, brown bread and butter, something cold and white in the glass.
From behind the bar: Sieve off the loose flour before frying. Otherwise you're deep-frying flour, and the oil is sludge by the second batch.
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.
scampi · London
Langoustine tails in breadcrumbs, fried, eaten with tartare and too much lemon. The basket version is pub carpet nostalgia. Made with the actual shellfish it is genuinely very good.
Where you'd actually eat it: Basket scampi is a carpeted-pub institution; the serious version turns up in the old-guard rooms around St James's. Lager, malt vinegar, absolutely no ceremony.
From behind the bar: Most pub scampi is reformed minced whitefish. Real langoustine costs more and tastes like it; monkfish is the best cheap stand-in — firm, sweet, holds the crumb.
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.
cheese and ham toastie · London
Cheddar, thick ham, English mustard, buttered on the outside and pressed slow in a pan. Late-night bar food that quietly outperforms most things on the dinner menu.
Where you'd actually eat it: Every pub with a press does one; the good ones use proper mature cheddar and carved ham. Ordered at 11pm with a Guinness, when nobody wants to commit to dinner.
From behind the bar: Grate the cheddar. A sliced slab leaks out the sides; grated melts evenly and stays where you put it.
salt beef beigel · London
Brined brisket, simmered until it gives, carved thick into a boiled beigel with English mustard and pickle. Not a pub dish. It's what you eat at three in the morning when the pubs are shut.
Where you'd actually eat it: Beigel Bake, 159 Brick Lane, open 24 hours since the seventies. The correct time is 3am, the correct company is whoever you were drinking with, the correct posture is standing.
From behind the bar: Buy ready-corned brisket and skip the week of brining. Rinse it before simmering or the finished beef is too salty to get through.
sausage on a stick · London
Chipolatas, roasted hard, stuck with a cocktail stick, mustard in a bowl. Costs almost nothing and keeps a round going another forty minutes. That is the entire point of a bar snack.
Where you'd actually eat it: Christmas-party food that never left the bar snack list. A couple of quid, a stick, a pot of mustard — something salty that keeps everybody standing there for one more.
From behind the bar: Chipolatas, not breakfast links with maple in them. Butcher pork sausage, thin gauge, plain seasoning, nothing sweet.
pint of prawns · London
Cold shell-on prawns served in a pint glass with mayonnaise and lemon. You peel your own. Slow, messy, and it eats an hour of a Friday without anyone noticing.
Where you'd actually eat it: An old fish-pub and seaside move that came back with the bar-snack revival. A pint of prawns, a pint of lager, a heap of shells and no plans.
From behind the bar: Cold-water prawns from the North Atlantic or Greenland. Warm-water tigers are bigger, cheaper and taste of almost nothing.
tavuk şiş · London
Yogurt-marinated thigh over charcoal, off the skewer into flatbread with sumac onions and chili sauce. Not pub food. It's the food that exists because pubs close at eleven.
Where you'd actually eat it: Green Lanes and Dalston ocakbaşıs run late and fill up the moment the pubs empty. Efes or şalgam, real charcoal in the window, fluorescent light, no atmosphere required.
From behind the bar: Flat skewers, not round. Round ones spin in your hand and the meat cooks on one face while you swear at it.
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.
pickled egg · London
A hard-boiled egg living in malt vinegar. Sharp, rubbery, faintly hostile. Traditionally eaten crumbled into a bag of crisps, which is either genius or a cry for help.
Where you'd actually eat it: The jar on the counter of an old boozer, next to the scratchings. One egg, a bag of crisps, a pint of mild. Nobody in the history of London has ordered two.
From behind the bar: Cold brine over cold eggs. Hot vinegar turns the whites rubbery and gray at the edges within a day.
pickled onions · London
Small onions in malt vinegar, eaten whole, in one, with a mouthful of cheddar. Six weeks of waiting for four seconds of pure acid. Worth it every time.
Where you'd actually eat it: In a jar behind the bar or sitting on a ploughman's plate. Malt vinegar is barley-based, so not gluten-free. Eaten whole with cheddar and a pint of bitter.
From behind the bar: Cold vinegar over the onions keeps them crisp. Hot vinegar half-cooks them soft, and a soft pickled onion is six weeks wasted.
Bombay mix (chivda) · London
Fried gram flour noodles, peanuts, lentils and curry leaves in a bag of chili and turmeric dust. Sold in half the pubs in London and it will catch you out around pint four.
Where you'd actually eat it: Corner shops, cash-and-carries and pub snack racks all over town; the good stuff is Wembley and Green Street. Bag torn open flat on the table, dusty fingers, cold lager.
From behind the bar: Sev needs an extruder press, so everyone buys it. Read the packet — some brands fry in ghee or add milk powder, which kills the vegan claim.
onion bhaji · London
Sliced onion bound in spiced gram flour and fried into a ragged tangle. Gram flour and onion, nothing else — it was always vegan, nobody ever made a thing of it.
Where you'd actually eat it: Brick Lane and Whitechapel curry houses, ordered with a pint of Cobra before anything else lands. Also the thing that turns up on every pub curry night in the city.
From behind the bar: Standard mint chutney is made with yogurt and is not vegan. Blend cilantro, green chili, lime and salt instead and lose nothing.
salt and vinegar crisps · London
The default. Potato sliced thin, fried, salted, soured. Bag torn down the seam and laid flat in the middle of the table so everybody can reach without asking.
Where you'd actually eat it: On the clip behind every bar in London. Worth knowing: cheese and onion nearly always contains dairy, and some salt and vinegar brands carry lactose. Read the bag.
From behind the bar: Bagged crisps get their bite from sodium diacetate, not vinegar. Vinegar powder is the home equivalent; a soak alone gives a softer, rounder sour.
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.