today we're in London and we're here to eat we can't wait to show you some of the best
food this city has to offer
if you love to eat London's food scene will be right
up your alley the city's food culture has a fascinating history and there is
no shortage of good food to be found here this is our third video from London
and we're here to hunt down the tastiest British food watch out for the ultimate
fry up, London's original street food and a
whole lot more in this three-part series we'll show you some of the capital's
tastiest food from iconic dishes to the best eats at London's famous Borough
Market you don't want to miss this series
get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're
Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry let's eat
in this London series we want to show you traditional British food the best
versions of really popular and well-known British dishes but also some
more unusual and lesser-known British foods so we're at our first stop and
we're starting with pie, mash, liquor and jellied eels
we're in the oldest surviving pie and mash shop in London M. Manze
and this place is insane it's been around since 1892 when you step into the
shop you feel like you've stepped back in time the atmosphere is
absolutely brilliant the ladies who work here are fantastic they're so friendly we
have come to eat the famous pie and mash so let me show you what we've ordered
this here obviously is the pie we've got huge mounds of creamy mashed potato on
the side and then the liquor which I mentioned before has got nothing to do
with booze it's actually this green parsley sauce there's a whole swimming
pool of liquor on the plate it's amazing and then they also traditionally serve
jellied eels with pie and mash so this is a cold dish so cold
eels and then it's got clumps of gelatin it's just formed a natural gelatin
around itself so this dish has a great history but before the pie and mash gets
cold I want to have a taste of it so it's just eat first and talk later so
we've got this pie it's made out of a suet pastry on the base so suet is the hard
fat which is around the kidneys of a cow or a lamb and then the top is either
a short pastry or a flaky pastry so you've got a great lot of mince in there
I'm gonna coat it in that liquor and then grab a chunk of mash too
this is comfort food right here the mash is super creamy the liquor is
really mild but it adds a great sort of wetness to the dish it's beautiful
and then that pastry of that pie is really crispy and flaky I'm gonna get another
bite get some more of that meat, that mince it's just a beef mince so it's actually
a secret recipe so they're keeping it well under wraps, alright
really traditional the pie is delicious it's very light and the mince has got a really great flavour
really beefy
I am loving this pie it is just super simple
really clean in flavour, pies are pretty much the original street food of London
they have a really long history in British food culture so they were sold
by vendors who'd roam the streets of the East End selling pies to the working
class often filled with really cheap cuts of meat like mutton
but then very soon after they turned into sort of pie
and mash houses so that people could have a really filling a meal so that's when the
mash and then the liquor came into being
I really want to get into these jellied
eels it's a very interesting dish so they're cooked in a stock which is then
left to cool so the jelly is just made from the natural gelatin that's come out
of the eels so a very simple dish let's just get a nice jellied bit
oh there are bones in there
oh it's really good, oh yum
it's quite a mild flavour it's got a beautiful fish taste it's a little bit
salty
really good the jelly's super soft hear that they go well with vinegar so got a
giant thing of vinegar here let's try it with that but there was plenty of flavour
without the vinegar so I'm just gonna get a little bit of vinegar on there get
the whole thing nice vinegared up jelly
they are delicious very mild in flavour a lovely saltiness and a very
interesting dish this came about because here in the
London the River Thames was so polluted back when all this food came about that
nothing survived there were no fish in there except the eels there were
millions of eels so it was all they had so why not get them and cook with them
it's a very interesting dish really tasty they told us that the drink to
have with is their sarsaparilla so they brought this over for us to try to
have with our meal
I love sarsaparilla it's made with the root of the sarsaparilla plant has a
real caramel sort of flavour that's actually a really mild one it does go
well because these flavors are quite subtle nothing super punchy
I'm loving this place the atmosphere is brilliant
you've got people coming in for a cup of tea and a pie it just
feels super traditional I love the tiled walls the booths that we're sitting in it
is a very very neat place
that was such a brilliant meal what makes a memorable meal it's not just about
what's on the plate in front of you it's about the smells and the surroundings
and the people that was truly a memorable meal and I think it perfectly
summed up what this video is going to be we're not showing you all the gimmicky
stuff, the fancy stuff, the Instagram stuff we're showing you what the locals
eat what's been around for a long time the really traditional food here in
London
next up we're eating somewhere I've wanted to eat at for a very long time these are
super interesting super unique here in London it's these little huts right here
this wee green hut it's a cabmen's shelter and you can get some super British food here
we're gonna get a bacon butty
we've grabbed our bacon sandwich so a pretty simple meal from this place
however this is more about the heritage of where we're eating than the food
itself these cab blackmen's cab boxes are really
interesting in the late 1800s these got set up because people were
getting a little bit frustrated when they wanted a cab which back then was
horse and cart but all the cabbies when it was raining were getting out of the
rain and they were hiding in the pub and in the pub they were drinking so they're
having their ale and they were sloshed so they weren't much help for the people
that wanted to get a cab at that time so they set these up where alcohol is
completely banned and one of the really interesting things as cab drivers are
allowed inside, Joe public like us we are not allowed inside so it's take away
only for us but in there is a really little seating area I could just see in
they had a little TV going there are a few cabbies in there just having their lunch
but we're only allowed to take away from the window these are incredibly
interesting so much history behind them
this sandwich
looks super good you should smell it it smells amazing so we've gone super
simple and a lot of the fare at these cabmen's huts is, just white bread thick
thick white bread got some butter some slabs of bacon on there and we went with
the brown sauce option so nothing worse than a cold bacon sandwich so let's get
into that
so it just is what it is and that
is what I love about it you've got that thick thick white bread it's a fraction
stale the bacon's nice and salty the brown sauce which is a like vinegar and
molasses and dates so it's just a nice sort of tangy fragrant sauce nice melted
butter from that bacon I love a bacon sandwich like this super good and it's
totally what I wanted to get from one of these cabmen's huts so there used to
be I think over sixty of them here in London now there are about ten that are
operational so a lot have just been lost to time basically just being bulldozed
for widening of roads, some were lost during the war being bombed all sorts of
things like that but they're really preserving them now so they've got
heritage status they're being looked after but I love that they're keeping
the tradition of the the cabdrivers are still the only ones allowed to go in
these places but they're really opening it up now to to people like us to be
able to grab some food from the window
I mean that's what I think of when I
think of London beautiful simple food like that and what a thing to have when
you're wandering the streets of the city a bacon sandwich or a bacon butty as we
call it, it is delicious and I love the history of these places
I'm really excited for our next meal we're heading for a fry up or a full
English breakfast now we've come to a cafe called the Regency Cafe it's really
famous, it's been here since 1946 it's a real
traditional local spot
we have gone for the full shebang for the full English breakfast it looks
incredible but this cafe is incredible too
this is what London's all about to me these really really brilliant places
with a lot of history and there are great tiles on the walls, got the guy
screaming out the orders behind me it's just it's got such a great feel about it
and check out this plate of food so the full English for us today is a fried egg
we've got some bacon under there we've got a sausage which will be a pork
sausage we've got some black pudding which is something I love that's made
with blood, we've got some mushrooms we've got a huge pile of baked beans and we've
got some tomatoes that have just been chucked into a pan so have a nice little
crispy bit on top
I think with any breakfast like this
you've got to start by popping your egg oh yeah nice runny yolk so just rip into
the egg I'm gonna cut open some black pudding so that is made with pig's
blood so it's kind of like a sausage but it's got oats in it and some pig's blood
so you can see it's all kind of sort of sticky there with blood I love black
pudding some baked beans let's get a mushroom
I love this type of food the black pudding's not too strong sometimes with
black pudding it has a lot of herbs and things in it so it gets real bursts of
that sort of flavour but this isn't, this is quite simple so it's got a nice um meaty
taste not irony or anything from the blood but it's a lovely texture cause it's a little
bit squishy but on the outside it's all nice and crispy where it's been fried in the
pan I love this food
it's all so simple
I've got to get more because there's so many combos options you know
you can just mix and match and really make up your food oh there's a nice
fatty bit of bacon and I love the baked beans because you've got the baked bean
sauce which pretty much just coats everything let's cut a big bit of tomato
off the tomato's nice and well cooked just how I like them I don't like them
when they're cooked for too long they go completely squishy this has still got a
little bit of crunchiness in the middle
oh that's so good
the tomato really holds its shape burst of sweet and tanginess
from that you've got from the baked beans you've obviously got a lot of sugar in
that tomato sauce so a lot of sweetness from the baked beans and the fatty
bit of bacon heaven
I was so excited about my full English totally
forgot about the drink so obviously a cup of tea to go with that a nice and milky
tea
exactly what you expect ooh it's nice and
strong really good and they also give you when you order the full English
these big thick slabs of white toast and some butter under there as well
this is the most incredible environment
it feels like the heart and soul of London being in a place like this
brilliant little eatery
I'm loving it with this nice buttery toast, the butter's nice and salty that toast
super thick but I've come up with my favourite mouthful which is this pork
sausage with a few herbs in it we've got this brown sauce which is just like
we had on the bacon butty so nice and tangy like a lot of that tangy sauce and
then sweet baked beans all over there
that is a good flavour combo this could not get more British I love this place the little
curtains, the tiles, the tables the staff it's as good as it gets for
proper British fare
you definitely don't go to a place like that for the best English breakfast in
London but you go for the feeling the nostalgia of it all there was nothing
wrong with that English breakfast it was incredibly tasty but it was all about
that environment such a neat cafe our kind of place
now it wouldn't be an
English food tour if we didn't have a cream tea so we're gonna settle in
have a cuppa some scones, jam and cream
we're having cream tea in this little cafe called the Cake Hole and it's at
the back of a vintage homewares shop so there's great vintage crockery and
cutlery and homewares out the front and then there's a little cozy cafe in the
back and all of the food is served on vintage crockery which is awesome
and holy moly this cream tea looks so good
so we've got some fluffy warm scones some clotted cream which looks super
luscious and thick and then raspberry jam and then a very very big pot of tea
so that's what I'm going to do first pour myself a cup of tea get that in there so that's
English breakfast nice and strong and then I've also got to add a dollop
of milk all right and then let's just get into these scones they are so fluffy
so they come from a bakery called Rinkoff's bakery and the bakery is still
family-run it's been around since 1911 so let's just open that up and I am a
clotted cream on the bottom and then jam on top type of girl
so let's whoa look at how thick that cream is it is super thick it's almost like butter
all right so spread that on there oh my goodness it is so thick and then a
dollop of beautiful raspberry jam on top get a lot of that on there all right
let's have a taste of this thing
there's nothing better than scones
jam and cream for afternoon tea the scone is very light and fluffy you can see
here that it's sort of cracked apart as its risen so scones are really basic
just sugar self raising flour butter and milk and then it's got this beautiful
golden glaze on the top from egg, the cream is so silky clotted cream is very
very thick and you can see that when the cream cools it develops these clots on
the top so those darker yellow bits really really silky and smooth
too much jam
the jam is very tangy and very sweet ohhh
let's have a sip of tea
beautiful
you