In the news

Over the years we have appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, websites, radio and even on TV! Here are a few of those articles about Goddards Pie and Mash Restaurant.

Alfred Goddard started the family-run business in Deptford in 1890 and the Greenwich shop was opened in 1952 to coincide with the arrival of the Cutty Sark. And the ship and shop have become an inseparable part of Greenwich's tourist lure. On weekends, the pie house becomes the haunt of the camera touting brigade, eager to sample true East End cuisine.

Customers line up diligently as mash is scooped, peas ladled and pies slapped cafeteria-style onto warm white plates. A good coating of gravy or traditional liquor sauce and you're on your way to a meal that will linger in the belly.

And here there is no gourmet puff-pastry flattery with a side order of high prices. A Goddard's pie is a moulded and gnarled knob of dough for less than £2. The crusts are thick and crunchy, the mash consistent and the peas are offered mushy or firm.

With more than 100 years of pie-baking pedigree, the recipes have remained largely unchanged, but vegetarians are also accounted for. Despite the already low prices there are specials available, with pie, mash, peas and gravy or liquor for £2. The adventurous can add another pie for an extra £1 or go for pie, mash and eels for £4.20.

Dessert pies and crumbles (blackcurrant, apple and rhubarb) are also available served with ice cream, custard, or both. If you're too busy to get up from the desk, Goddards will deliver and even provide staff to serve your order. Groups of up to 40 can indulge in cockney-themed parties in the upstairs function room.
 

A FAMILY-RUN pie shop will be battling upper crust big business in the High Court. Goddard's Pie Shop, which has been dishing-up pies to punters for nearly half a century, is fighting to remain in Greenwich Church Street. And the Goddard family is going all the way to the High Court to challenge a compulsory purchase order placed on its premises by Greenwich Council.

The block which houses the pie shop, is being compulsorily purchased to develop shops above and around the planned DLR station at Cutty Sark Gardens. Station developers Centros Miller Ltd want to refurbish the shops to the same standard as the rest of the development - even though the existing businesses say they have enough cash to do it themselves. Jeff Goddard has owned the pie shop business with his brother Kane and mother Pam, since his father died in 1990.

He said: "Our business has been established for 100 years. "My grandfather opened this shop in 1952 and since the arrival of the Cutty Sark, tourism has increased.

"We are adamant we want to stay in that property because it is the right style for our business. It's old - the centre part is more than 300 years old and the atmosphere is perfect.

"We feel we deserve to get some benefits from the millennium and it shouldn't all go to big business."

A spokesman for the DLR monitoring group which is campaigning on behalf of the shop owners said: "It has become clear the council's only objective is to kick the owners out and to hand the buildings over to developers, Centros Miller
 

Jellied eels at the opera

JELLIED eels are making an unlikely comeback as a trendy seafood delicacy. After decades of declining sales, the eels - cooked with spices and set in gelatine - are being rediscovered by a new band of sophisticated consumers across Britain.

Alan Hayes, a former fisherman who runs a seafood shop in Brighton, reports a 50 per cent increase in sales. "A lot of young people are getting adventurous and choosing jellied eels," he says. "They are more sophisticated now. We have one customer who takes 11 tubs of them to eat on his way to the opera."

Kane Goddard, whose family has run Goddards Pie Shop in Greenwich since Victorian times, says that the dish is now "very much back in favour" with the younger generation.