"Manze’s is never going to change anyone’s opinion on pie and mash. While places like Goddards in Greenwich are innovating with various degrees of success, adding different pies (welcome), extra spicy chilli vinegar (extremely welcome) and baked beans (an atrocity), Manze’s sticks to the two “indigenous” London foods that it’s been serving since Italian Michele Manze came over from Ravello and opened up shop in 1902: pie, mash and liquor, and eels. Either you were brought up on this food and buy into its lore, the fork and spoons (knives are provided solely to weed out the daytrippers), the gummy pies and pappy mash, smeared round the edge of the plate, a bulwark to keep out the seepage of mucilaginous Kermit-green liquor. Or you regard it as the culinary equivalent of Brexit. Manze’s is nostalgia, it’s baby food nonpareil, it’s lineage and tradition, it’s London culture to the hilt. The fact of whether it’s good or not (and to be clear, it is actually very good) is almost immaterial, it should be compulsory for any Londoner who likes food to go to Manze’s at least once a year and order a double pie and mash, dowse it with the oddly Chinese condiments (chilli vinegar and white pepper) and pray that they don’t all move to Essex." - Jonathan Nunn
