Bill's pies

If you like meat pies, you can't go far wrong with Bill's pies from Wellbeloved Butchers at the bottom of Tanner's Hill. When The Geezer and I first started looking for a new home in Deptford, I remember one of the local estate agents raving about these legendary pies as a good reason for taking a place on Tanner's Hill.When we eventually moved in, it took us a while to get round to trying them since we ended up right down the other end of the high street.

Wellbeloved's is the best butcher in Deptford by far. Rather than heaps of chicken portions advertised at ten for a fiver, or whatever, Bill serves good quality meat at realistic prices. And he has pies. Great ones. Chicken & mushroom, chicken & ham, lamb & vegetables, steak & kidney, steak & mushroom... and if you go in at the right time, they are still warm from being freshly baked. Sometimes it can be difficult to resist eating them right away, even when you've just had a full English!

The pastry is flakey and crisp, the fillings are chunks of tender meat rather than minced, indistiguishable muck, and at £1.50 each they make a great Saturday night dinner with minimal outlay, either in time or money!

There is nearly always a queue at Bill's (painfully so on Christmas Eve, as we discovered last year!) and for all the right reasons. The service is helpful and friendly without being obsequious, he has the best black pudding I've found so far in London, and his hygiene is second to none. Order fresh and cooked meat, and you'll see him meticulously washing his hands between handling both, something I can't say I've noticed elsewhere.

Excuse me, all this talk of food is making me peckish....