Eating jellied eels in East London

Every Londoner knows that waves of migration over the years have blessed the capital with a stunning range of culinary options, which make it a wonderful place for adventurous eaters. We have tongue singing curries from India, character filled Caribbeans, filthy posh eggs from France and even alarming Germanic-Argentinian sausages for less fortunate explorers. What we don't have much of is London's own culture that hasn't been 'borrowed' from somewhere else. It is for precisely this reason that Tim and I have long harboured an ambition to eat eels. (Pretty much the only delicacy London can call it's own - Such is the bounty of the Thames!)

Our other motivator was the amount of fuss that our housemates made when we proposed the idea. The landlord had been given them as a child and hated it (he grew up in East London so it was a right of passage) but even more shock and horror was expressed by his girlfriend who had never even seen a plate of eels but was disgusted by the very idea. This was therefore a chance to out-London them both!

We live in deep dark East London. Upton Park to be precise, which means that there are eel sellers locally. There had been a West Ham match on, it was drizzling and people were making themselves scarce, all except for those taking pictures of themselves outside the Boleyn stadium and those queuing outside the pie & eel shop. I was pretty excited but also a bit nervous about what I'd let myself in for (could there be a reason that today burritos are more popular than eels?), but as I weakly rationalised to Tim: At least eels don't have bones in. I can cope with anything as long as there are no bones. (There's few things I find more frustrating than messing about with a complicated skeletal choke hazard on my plate.)

When we got in through the door we could see the whole shop was full of customers all eating pies (not eels!) and nearly all wearing West Ham shirts.

"Whatever happens don't tell anyone I support Arsenal," whispered Tim, very quietly but quite unnecessarily. Even I know what happens to misplaced Arsenal supporters here.

The ladies at the counter were cute, they all looked like they'd been working there since West Ham won the world cup in 1966 and eels were still popular. Not one was below the retirement age. They were delighted to hear I was trying eels for the first time too and as they put down my plate,

"There you go lovie, this is yours and there's a plate for the bones"

Bones! What do eels want bones for!? I was not impressed with this prospect. My key sliver of positivity had just been deleted.

Not winning any prizes for good looks

My assessment of the eels, mash and liquor is that they're not too bad. I was told in advance that liquor would be like water, which sounded gross but turned out to be wholly untrue. Liquor is like very thick, rather good gravy and gives flavour to the whole thing (because there's so much of it!) The eels are ok, not least because they don't taste strongly (and they don't have much need of their bones so it's not like trying to faff about with a regular fish). The texture however is the key turnoff - I know jellied eels have the texture of jelly, but this is identical in practice to the texture of gelatinous fat, which I found a much harder thought to swallow. Nevertheless, at the end of the meal we'd both got clear plates and were feeling rather pleased with ourselves. Tim even said he'd eat them again (but perhaps not if pie was available as an alternative).

What's important is that we walked into that cafe mere people and left as real Londoners.

Nervous smile before my first taste