You Can't Go Wrong With a Cheap Pocket of Meat: a great snack or lunch place in London

   Chunks of steak, hunks of potato, a variety of assorted vegetables, a subtle gravy all wrapped in a flaky pastry shell and this is only one variety; yours might have apples, cheese or bacon.  Your mouth is watering  for what the British call a Pasty and you can find an excellent sampling of them at Covent Garden in London and a few other locations around.

  Let's face it, your gonna be hungry after walking all day enjoying the sites of London and chances are you are going to be at or in the vicinity of Covent Garden at some point.   So, as you sit around and watch the street performers help yourself to a light inexpensive lunch at the West Cornwall Pasty Co.  The establishment is small but hard to miss...just look for the sign with the Pirate and the line out the door. Then step right up and order at the counter.

The delectable little item comes with a wide range of fillings.  Some lunch some dessert.  Traditionally the fillings are meat, potatoes, onions and turnip but this little shop provides for almost every taste.  The price is unbeatable too.  As your budget becomes strained while traveling around  England you will have to find ways to eat cheaply and this is definitely the place.  The prices range from about 1.40 pounds to 2.80 pounds depending on the size.  Include with that free street entertainment that regularly graces Covent Garden and you just got dinner and a show for around 5 dollars.

No one is quite sure where this little pocket of deliciousness came from but it is suspected that it originated with Cornish miners who would take these into the mines everyday as lunch.  Wrapped tight in its flaky crust the fillings would be kept warm and the filthy miners could hold onto the harder outer crust, keeping the food clean.  Other similar ethnic foods you may be familiar with are the empanada, the calzone and the American hotpocket,  but when you're in London there is no better snack than a Pasty.  (various dialects pronounce the word differently but I found that pass-tee seemed to work.  If all else fails just point.)

 

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Comments

[Coqui]

Superb post on the pasty.

That is one of the staple foods that I miss from the UK, that and fish and chips with vinegar + scraps(wrapped in newspaper of course).

Thanks for this post

[Gudrun]

oh dear, are we Americans known for the hotpocket? I don't even think that is in the same league the British Pasty!

These remind me of the pies they have in Australia - my favorite is steak and kidney with mash potatoes on top. Yummers!