M. Manze, London
Obviously life in Victorian London wasn’t all beer and skittles, what with a dose of typhoid, grinding poverty and the risk of bumping into Jack the Ripper being uppermost in the minds of working-class folk. Still, there was always pie, mash and jellied eels to look forward to, so things can’t have been all bad. M. Manze has been using its Italian founder’s original recipes to serve up a bona fide taste of Old London Town at their shop on Tower Bridge Road since 1902 – and it has changed little since it opened. I’m often to be found parked on a wooden bench, scoffing a meat pie (veggie pies are also available) with mash, parsley-flecked liquor and lashings of chilli vinegar – although the stewed or jellied eels are just a little too authentic for my simple tastes. They also deliver a full range of oven-ready cockney cuisine across the UK, the perfect culinary accompaniment for a knees-up round the old Joanna.
87 Tower Bridge Road, SE1, manze.co.uk
PB
My food vice… M&S New York Deli Style Pastrami Sandwich
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, we should all be buying our sandwiches from dedicated, independent bakery-cafes. But the fact is, in towns across the UK – say, you’re anywhere from Devizes to Doncaster with 10 minutes to grab lunch – the supermarket is often your least worst option. That is why we all need a favourite supermarket sandwich. M&S’s pastrami is not the best out there (that’s the salt beef pretzel sub from Heston Blumenthal’s Waitrose range, but availability is limited) and, if it meant walking another 300 yards, I could settle for Britain’s third best supermarket sandwich, Sainsbury’s ham hock and extra mature cheddar. But this is definitely my default, go-to butty. A native New Yorker would laugh their ass off at it, but this relative spiky combo of gherkins, sauerkraut and mustard, peppery pastrami and lightly earthy rye bread actually tastes of something, even straight from the chiller. That is precious.
£3.50, from Marks & Spencer
TN
Boak & Bailey on booze
An obscure variety of German beer, Gose is suddenly the talk of the town thanks to the insatiable desire for novelty among brew geeks. A refreshingly sour pale wheat beer that contains coriander (not so unusual) and salt (weird), Gose was once popular in Saxony (Goslar and then Leipzig), but is now produced there by only a handful of revivalists. The accessible, not overly sour Ritterguts is sometimes found in the UK, but our own brewers have also recently discovered the style. Huddersfield’s Magic Rock use theirs, Salty Kiss, as the base for experiments with fruit flavours such as lime and grapefruit. Recently, a more conservative brewery, Cornwall’s St Austell, released a less-acidic attempt in Steady As She Gose, that – bear with us – was like an alcoholic version of an isotonic sports drink and, cold from the keg, will be perfect for drinking on a hot summer day.
