Joe Cooke and his wife Kim, started the eel, pie and mash shop on Hoxton street in 1987. Joe is the great grandson of Robert Cooke, a butcher who founded the original Cooke’s eel pie and mash shop at nearby Sclater street off Brick Lane in 1862. The F. Cooke, eel, pie and mash shops have been in London for several generations and in their heyday there were about 12 shops, according to Joe. The shop on Hoxton Street however, is now the only F. Cooke shop left standing in London, after Joe’s older brother Bob closed his doors in Broadway Market at Christmas 2019. This was the shop which their grandfather, Frederick Cooke opened in 1900, with another following on Kingsland High Street, Dalston, in 1910.
Says Joe Cooke, 67; “We are in a bit of a pickle. The biggest thing with the Corona is the uncertainty of everything: people, they’re confused and we are getting mixed messages. It’s the uncertainty of everything that’s making everybody confused. With our older customers they are not coming out or in. We do have customers in their 90s and one that’s a 100 years old. There is no way on God’s earth they are going to venture out. It’s just not going to happen. We’re trying our best: we are trying to adhere to all the rules… I think its very very tough and if we have another full lock-down/shut-down - call what you will... I think it will be massively damaging.
We haven’t reached the end of the furlough yet, at which time I think it will be a car crash. I think we can survive - I think we can. But I would be a liar - everybody would be a liar - if they didn’t say it would be bloody difficult. BSE was absolutely devastating but it’s a pin prick compared to this!
Joe’s wife and business partner, Kim, 63 says; “Covid-19 has absolutely destroyed probably two-thirds of business… I’m not sure where we go from here. We are now working four days a week instead of six. We are hoping to resume to five days, but certainly not six. My husband’s now retired and my staff basically run it. I am just here to oversee what goes on. It’s throughout the city and it’s really sad, because we are the last standing one of the Cooke’s who started the business in 1862 and my children won’t go into it and that will be it.
I don’t know how long we can survive from now. There are up and coming Pie and Mash shops but they will never be the same as ours".
