Pie and mash has returned to Chapel Market, with The Alma pub now serving the classic Manze dish a short walk from where the market’s famous shop traded for more than a century.
The pub at 77-78 Chapel Market is serving meat pies with mashed potato and parsley liquor, made with pies brought in each day from the Manze kitchen at Tower Bridge. For customers who had missed the dish at the Angel, the arrival means a familiar lunch is back on the market, now served in a pub setting alongside the usual drinks offer. One customer post highlighted the price as good value, listing a single pie with a single portion of mash at £7.
A familiar dish returns a few doors away
For many local shoppers, pie and mash was part of the weekly routine at Chapel Market for generations. The traditional serving — a minced beef pie, a scoop of mash and a ladle of green parsley liquor — is simple, filling and quick, which is exactly why it suited a busy street market where traders, workers and families often eat on the move. Vinegar and a shake of pepper are the usual finishing touches, and regulars tend to have strong views about how much liquor is enough.
That routine disappeared when the market’s long-running pie and mash shop closed, and a short-lived attempt to revive it this summer raised hopes before closing again within weeks. The Alma’s new serving does not reopen the old shop, but it restores the taste that many people associated with a trip to the market. Early reaction online has been warm, with former customers sharing memories of growing up in Islington and saying they now know where to head on a Saturday.
How the market lost its pie and mash shop
The Manze shop in Chapel Market first opened in 1905 and went on to trade for 108 years before closing in 2019. The Grade II listed restaurant was a fixture of the market throughout that period, while rising business rates were blamed for the decision to close. At its height in the 1930s, Michele Manze and his family ran 14 eel, pie and mash shops across London. Only three Manze shops remain today, which helps explain why each closure is felt so keenly by loyal customers.
There was fresh optimism earlier this year when a new team led by Martin Savage and John Gordon took over the listed premises in June and reopened them as 74 Chapel Market, serving pies, mash and gravies. The revival proved brief. Within weeks, the business announced it could no longer keep trading because of matters outside its control, leaving regulars disappointed for a second time and the market without its signature dish once more.
Seen against that history, The Alma stepping in matters for more than one menu. Street markets depend on dependable, affordable food that keeps people lingering between stalls, and the loss of a century-old food business left a visible gap. A pub serving the same Manze pies helps keep that food tradition on the same street, even if the room, the ritual and the licensing hours around it feel different.
A market pub with its own long history
The Alma is well placed to carry that tradition. A beer shop has stood on the site since the 1840s, and the pub takes its name from the Crimean Battle of Alma of 1854. Its Edwardian frontage dates to 1912, and Chapel Market provided the backdrop for the opening credits of Only Fools and Horses, which were filmed at the market. For more than 100 years the pub has served market traders, nearby workers and local residents, and it continues to offer live sport screenings, cask ales and live music nights.
That mix is part of a wider story of change for Islington food and pubs, where long-loved independents sit alongside new arrivals. Readers can see the same appetite for distinctive local baking in our report on Dusty Knuckle choosing Blackstock Road for its third north London bakery, while the search for a new landlord at the historic Hope & Anchor music pub shows how much work goes into keeping characterful Islington venues alive.
What changes for customers
The biggest change is the setting. Instead of a tiled pie shop counter, customers now order Manze pie and mash inside a traditional pub, where the dish sits alongside cask ales and the social side of a market local. The pies themselves are described as the original Manze product delivered daily from Tower Bridge, so the flavor that regulars remember should be consistent. The £7 single pie and single mash price cited by one customer also keeps the meal in the territory of an affordable market lunch rather than a special-occasion treat.
For Chapel Market, the effect is practical as well as nostalgic. Traders and shoppers get another reason to stay on the street, nearby workers gain a quick hot option, and visitors exploring the Angel have an easy way to try one of London’s most distinctive working-class dishes in the place where it was sold for over a century. Whether the pub serving becomes a long-term fixture will depend on demand, but the early response suggests the market had been waiting for exactly this kind of return.
