Alfie Hak is, at 28, the youngest person to take charge of the family run Noted Eel and Pie House in East London, which is surviving at a tricky time for pie & mash shops
Britain’s youngest pie & mash shop owner is a Generation Z businessman who is stewarding centuries of cockney culture into the modern age – but with a twist.
Alfie Hak, 28, has put his own twist on the time-honoured cuisine with a combination of social media and some light culinary modifications, after taking up his family’s business. Alfie is the fourth generation of his family to take over the running of Noted Eel and Pie House in East London, an eatery that first opened back in 1926.
The passionate foodie grew up eating at his father, grandfather and great-grandfather’s shop, and has adapted the shop to adapt to modernity after watching other old-school restaurants fall into decline in recent years.
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Spotting a gap in the market, Alfie, who began helping his father in the shop at around just 10 years old, launched a TikTok account, That Pie Guy, to promote his business. The popularity of his videos – which have garnered millions of likes – along with the expansion of his menu mean business is booming with sales of over 1,000 pies on a busy day.
Pie & mash is a historic London staple dating back to the Dickensian 19th Century, when it was eaten as a cheap, nutritious meal for working-class dockers.
Traditionally, minced beef pies are paired with scoops of mashed potato and topped with a parsley sauce called “liquor” and chilli vinegar, and often served with stewed or jellied eels. However, shops across the capital have been forced to close their doors in recent years due to a lack of trade.
Aware of the challenge of merging tradition with modernity, Alfie has expanded the usually basic menu to entice those of all tastes to his shop.
The Noted Eel and Pie House, now based in Leytonstone in East London, serves vegan pies made with soya mince as well as gravy and homemade apple crumble, as well as all the traditional menu items. “We started doing a vegan pie with soya mince about four years ago – even offering something like that helps,” Alfie explained.
“Little things like offering gravy… It’s about catering to everyone’s tastes, whilst keeping the traditional aspect of it as well. These little tweaks here and there are helping.”
“If you take a look from the outside, you see all of these pie and mash shops closing over the last ten years – especially in London. But I’m quite young, and I try to look at why they’re closing down. One of the biggest factors is social media. I’m trying to bring the business into modern times.
“None of the shops that have closed were doing anything online.” That Pie Guy, Alfie’s Moniker, has now amassed more than 165,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, with his most popular video having been viewed more than 8.6 million times.
The videos show Alfie and his colleagues in the day-to-day running of the shop, and how they make everything from scratch. Alfie says that despite some early backlash from London’s Black Cabbies, who were opposed to pie shops selling food on Uber Eats, delivery platforms constitute another important step into the 21st Century.
“They take a big cut, but you can always adjust your prices,” he said. “It’s more expensive if you order from them, but the younger generations are always ordering food online.
“Just being on those platforms helps get your name out there. It’s important to be on them. The pie shops that seem to be the biggest are the ones with the younger owners.” Alfie took over the running of his family’s pie shop last year, but the shop has been part of his family for around a century.
His great-grandfather, Huite Hak, founded the first shop in Bow Road in 1926, after coming over from Holland to live with a family who owned a pie shop.
In 1977, the shop was moved to Leytonstone, with Huite’s son and his son after him – Alfie’s dad, appropriately named Pieter – taking over the shop. Now Alfie, the youngest of three brothers, has taken over from them to continue the family trade. One of his uncles, 78-year-old Les ‘The Pie’ Sheilds, still works part-time at the shop with Alfie.
“I would go in and help my dad out on odd days when I wasn’t at school from the age of around ten, and my mum would take me in for food,” he said.
“Sometimes my dad had to take me to work and I’d bring my PSP to play on. But as soon as I got there, I just fell into the work – I didn’t touch my PSP at all. Pie and mash is the original fast food. You’re served, and within minutes, you have a hot meal in front of you – but it isn’t mass-produced.
“A team of five of us still make the pies every morning. We know exactly what’s in it. It’s a fresh, hearty fast food.” Having accrued a following in the United States through his video, and with one of his elder brothers now living in Texas, Alfie said it would be a ‘dream’ to bring the food across to America in a pop-up one day.
“People message me from America every week, saying: ‘We need pie and mash out here’,” he said. “It would be a dream to do a pop-up out there. People think it’s a meal only eaten by old English couples, but that’s not the case.
“It’s so multicultural in East London, so we get all sorts of people coming in. It’s a really mixed group. Tourists know what to order from videos they watch. It’s not like a pub full of regulars who turn round when a new person walks in. I’m trying to break that misconception.”
“Pie shops are about community. I’m very passionate about pie and mash. It might be a bit sad, but I sometimes go to support pie and mash shops in other areas on my days off.
“I like the really old ones with the tiled interiors.” Asked what he’d say to the many critics of British cuisine, Alfie added: “I just laugh at people who say it’s boring. Just come in and try the food. People who’ve eaten all over the world still come to the shop and enjoy our food.
“Pie & mash is not supposed to be something with a million different spices in; it’s a comfort food at the end of the day. But also, a full-English is probably the best breakfast in the world; and a roast dinner is one of the best dinners in the world, so the English can do good food.”
Alfie is backing the campaign to have pie & mash awarded protected status, a label enjoyed by the likes of Melton Mowbray pork pies and Cornish Pasties, to ensure the cuisine is never forgotten.
Richard Holden, the Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay, is spearheading the campaign, which would legally safeguard traditional recipes and methods, differentiating authentic shops from standard fast food outlets.
