Facing the Jellied Eel

A Series of Bad Decisions

Aug 07, 2022

There are many nice ways to spend a Sunday in London. You can visit the Barbican Conservatory and walk among the plants. You can get a coffee and a pastel de nata from a nearby cafe. If cafe fare isn’t enough, you can go to a pub and get a Sunday roast with all the trimmings (and maybe add a pint while you’re at it). These are all worthwhile endeavors. They’re pleasant, and pleasant is good.

But sometimes you don’t want pleasant. Sometimes, upon waking, you find yourself consumed by darker thoughts—thoughts like, “Hey, I could eat a jellied eel at 10 o’clock in the morning.”

Such a pursuit will almost certainly end in disaster. You know that. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, you’re determined. You will have jellied eels for breakfast.

When the call to eel-related adventure embodies you, here’s what you do.

From central London, you take the Tube eastbound to Canary Wharf. You leave the station and walk to the pier on the River Thames, where you board the early boat to Greenwich.

As you step on, you realize that taking a boat in London will not be as charming as you’d hoped. The deck is loud and dirty and full. The only seats are in the engine room at the back, and you discover that most of them are occupied by a bachelorette party.

You sit anyway.

Within seconds, you regret it. You listen to fifteen young, slightly drunk women talk about how they’ve recently gone vegan, and how important that is. Then they discuss the group pedicure planned for that afternoon. They’re all wearing matching sashes that say “Bride Tribe.” There’s squealing going on. A lot of squealing. More squealing than you’ve heard in the last several months combined.

You contemplate throwing yourself into the river. There are, presumably, eels down there, and the eels, presumably, are not wearing matching sashes. Maybe you could catch one, go home, and jelly it yourself. Or maybe you’d drown. At least it would be quiet.

In your head, the River Thames was idyllic. In reality, it’s muddy and filled with trash. You wonder how many bodies have been dumped into the water. Do eels eat human flesh? They seem like they would. If an eel eats a human, and then you eat the eel, does that make you a cannibal by proxy?

It occurs to you that you’re inhaling a lot of diesel fumes. Perhaps you should leave the engine room.

The bachelorettes are trying to order vegan pizzas by app. They’re having trouble. From what you gather, the pizza shop offers dairy-free cheese, but the app won’t allow modifications. One girl starts crying. You’re happy about that.

Before the bachelorettes can resolve the issue, the boat stops. They adjust their sashes and disembark.

Thank God. The boat continues toward Greenwich in relative silence.

You arrive to find that Greenwich is bustling with tourists. There’s a maritime museum with a line coming out the door. There’s a dolphin statue, surrounded by the kinds of people who are wowed by dolphin statues. They pose and take photos. You wonder what’s wrong with them. Then you remember that you’ve chosen to spend your morning in pursuit of jellied fish. Perhaps you shouldn’t judge.

You weave your way through the crowd and head toward the high street. A few blocks away, you find the place you’re looking for: Goddards at Greenwich.

From what you understand, Goddards is an institution. It’s an East End pie shop run by the same family since 1890. For the last 130 years, they’ve served three things: pies, mash, and jellied eels.

When you step into Goddards, you feel a glimmer of hope. Maybe this outing won’t be so bad. Goddards is cozy. It has the same sense of comfort you find in an American diner. You don’t see any eels, but the pies look excellent, and so does the mash.

The women behind the counter are cheerful. One of them asks you what you’d like. The eels, you tell her. You pay. She hands you cutlery and napkins.

“Anywhere you’d like,” she says. “I’ll call you when your order’s up.”

You sit at a nearby booth and watch the kitchen operate. The staff move with easygoing efficiency; you can tell they’ve been here for years. Pies line a shelf behind the register. The pastry looks flaky and light. You can smell the warm parsley sauce that gets spooned over the mash. This place clearly knows what it’s doing.

The woman who served you looks in your direction. You walk over to her and she hands you a bowl.

“Lots of chili vinegar on these,” she says. She nods at the bottle of vinegar on your table. “And mind the bones.”

You thank her, take the bowl, and head back to your booth.

You consider the day. You could be sitting quietly in front of a cafe, sipping a cappuccino and doing the crossword. Instead, you’ve made a two hour journey to get here. You’ve braved a vegan bachelorette party, a dirty boat ride, a group of dolphin statue-loving tourists. You’ve inhaled a substantial amount of diesel fumes. You’ve committed to hunting the jellied eel, and now, finally, your quarry is in front of you.

You had built up some kind of romance around this dish. You thought it could be a hidden gem—a former cultural staple, lost to modernity with no good cause but the passing of time.

Now, sitting in front of the bowl, you have to admit that things are not looking good. There’s no way around it: it’s a bunch of hacked up fish, wobbling in jelly.

But you haven’t tasted it yet! Maybe you’ll discover a mesmerizing blend of spices in the gelatin. Maybe, underneath its ugly veneer, English eel is light and flaky, an overlooked delicacy of the marine world.

You spear a fish chunk and dislodge it from the quivering mass. A glob of jelly comes along with it. You put the bite in your mouth and begin to chew. For a moment, words escape you.

It is, by far, the worst thing you’ve ever eaten.

There’s no flavor at all. No spices. No seasoning. In theory, that doesn’t sound too bad. In reality, however, the blandness is a curse. Without any taste, all that remains is texture. Cold, soft, thick jelly gives way to rough pelagic skin. Each bite ends in a crunch of vertebrae—the eel’s spine has been left in.

You recall what the counter staff said and douse the rest of the eels in chili vinegar. You didn’t think it was possible, but somehow the vinegar makes things worse.

For the first time you can remember, food has put you at genuine risk of vomiting. You feel physically ill. Frankly, you’re concerned you might be mentally ill. Why in God’s name did you think this was a good idea?

You push the bowl away and sit back in your booth.

This, you concede, was bad. You have romantic ambitions of food writing. In a moment of clarity, you’re forced to acknowledge where they’ve gotten you: sitting alone in a low-rent pie shop, eating a bowl of jellied fish.

Your nausea is subsiding. You leave the bowl of eels, thank the staff, and walk out into the overcast streets of London. You look around for a moment, then turn back toward the river. Perhaps you can avoid the engine room on the long ride home.