Chicken and mushroom pie

Chip shops keep more than one pie because one filling does not suit a queue. Chicken and mushroom is the milder one: white meat, creamier sauce, mushrooms, no kidney. It is the pie you order when steak and kidney is too strong, or when you want something that sits next to chips without tasting like a beef stew.

At Salt & Vinegar, Coulsdon, the published Pukka list puts chicken and mushroom at £4.00, the same as steak and kidney and beef and onion. The three pies are not a tasting menu. They are three lids in a warmer. Say the filling. “The chicken one” is usually enough; “a pie” is not. The photograph on this page is chips, because chips are how most people eat the pie. It is not a labelled pastry from 85 Stoats Nest Road.

Why this pie exists on a fish board

A chippy is a fryer first. Pies are the thing you sell to the person who does not want battered fish, and to the person who does want fish but is ordering for a table. Chicken and mushroom is useful on a Friday night when four names go on one ticket: two cod, one sausage, one pie. It is also useful at lunch on a Tuesday, when a single pie and chips is faster than waiting for a fillet if the fryer is already committed.

Pukka pies are factory pies. That is not an insult. It is why the same three names appear in chippies from Kent to Lancashire. The shop heats them. It does not claim to have mixed the filling that morning. This guide does not invent a recipe, a calorie count, or a mushroom variety. If you need to know about allergens — wheat in the pastry, milk in a creamy filling, mushroom itself — ask at the counter. A website paragraph is not an ingredients label.

Ordering in Coulsdon

Chicken and mushroom pie, chips if you want them (from £3.00), mushy peas £2.00 or curry sauce £2.40 if you want a wet pot. Salt and vinegar on the chips. Phone 020 8660 6990 from Stoats Nest Road or from Coulsdon South if you want it bagged. Hours on the listing: Monday to Saturday 12:00–21:45. Sunday closed.

There is no published “pie meal” with a set chip size on this board. You build it. A large family order should name the pie filling for each person, not “three pies”. Prices change. This site is an independent guide. It does not heat the pie. If the warmer is empty, the shop will tell you. That answer, not this page, is the live stock list.

Questions