The Last Bite: Steak Pie and Chips at Dalston's Only Non-Hipster Cafe
Arthur's Cafe in East London. All photos by Dante Holdsworth.

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Food

The Last Bite: Steak Pie and Chips at Dalston's Only Non-Hipster Cafe

Arthur’s is a classic East End cafe, preserved, if you will, in corned beef jelly. “I do things like stewing steak with boiled peas,” says the eponymous Arthur Woodham, now in his 76th year of service at the cafe. “You don’t get many cafes doing that...

Welcome back to The Last Bite, our new column documenting the survival of traditional food establishments in a ramen-slurping, matcha latte-sipping, novelty cafe-obsessed world. As cities develop and dining habits change, can the dive bars and defiantly untrendy restaurants keep up?

Here, we talk to longstanding bartenders, chefs, market stall holders, and restaurant owners to find out what the future may hold. Today, we visit one of the oldest cafes in London's East End, headed up by the inimitable Arthur Woodham.

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Arthur's Cafe is an always-heaving, 52-seater time capsule of East London past, preserved, if you will, in corned beef jelly. It's as fresh-faced as Arthur Woodham himself, a man in his 76th year of service and still sweeping across the cafe floor as easily as a knife-load of softened margarine over a split bread cob.

READ MORE: The Last Bite: Gözleme and Gungo Peas at a 19th Century Street Market

Woodham is backed by a staff of family and long-serving colleagues. Grandson James, sandwich ninja and vanguard of the chilled counter, prepares non-cooked food on loop. His speed rivals any automated production line.

Downstairs, Woodham's wife Eileen and two other kitchen staff make the hot food: chips, cooked breakfasts, and the daily specials—usually a rotation of pies, stew, chicken, and liver. Woodham assures us that absolutely everything is cooked from scratch.

Arthur Woodham, owner of Arthur's Cafe. All photos by Dante Holdsworth.

"I do things like stewing steak with boiled peas, carrots, and dumplings," he explains. "You don't get many cafes doing that anymore."

The cafe's fanbase is loyal and disparate. In a recent Guardian restaurant review, Marina O'Loughlin raved about its "flawlessly fried eggs," golden chips, and "tea the colour of a Geordie lothario."

"My favourites are steak underdone and smoked salmon and chips," says Woodham.

Other popular dishes at the cafe include Tottenham cake, a behemoth of pink iced sponge served with optional custard. The best-selling menu items are ham, egg, and chips and steak pie. Breakfasts is served from 7 AM, but woe betide anybody who orders bacon or toast after 11.30 AM. That's a non-negotiable cut-off point.

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From the outside, Arthur's is as smart as any new build, with an unintentionally kitsch combination of tan tiles, Lincoln green canopy, and orange signage. Inside, it's spotless, covered in painted mirrors and with a particularly impressive stained glass parrot.

"I redo the whole place every 25 years," says Woodham.

Woodham starts work at midnight each day to be prepared for the early opening time. He cooks until the doors open, then hosts until they close at 3 PM. The commute is fortuitously short—precisely one flight of stairs from the flat above the cafe—and the working week runs from Monday to Friday only.

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"You can't not be prepared," he says. "It's how a lot of cafe people work."

Around half of the clientele at Arthur's are regulars, something the man himself puts down to its reputation as one of the best meeting spots in the area. When I visit on a Monday afternoon, every table is full—pensioners, builders, and students rubbing shoulders with bikers, couples, and friends of the Woodham family.

"We get a good class of people in here," he says.

Woodham started working at 14.

"That's what everybody did back then," he says. "You left school at 12 and started working. I followed my dad's footsteps."

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The family enterprise began in 1935 when Woodham's father opened a cafe down the road near Shoreditch. The cafe then moved to its current spot on Kingsland Road, and now sits in the long-cast shadow of forever-sprouting high rise apartments and London's hub of hipsterdom.

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Unsurprisingly, Woodham preferred the pre-penthouse days.

"I liked Dalston years ago because you had an Odeon Picturehouse, Marks and Spencer, Woolworths, Scotts the dress shop," he remembers. "Now all there are is properties. You need a lot of money to get a property around here now."

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The redevelopment of Dalston into a playground for the wealthy makes Arthur's about more than bacon butties. Along with the 19th century Ridley Road market and fellow family-run Turkish restaurants, the cafe keeps Dalston rooted in the face of hurricane-level headwinds.

READ MORE: The Last Bite: Northumberland's Ancient Kipper Smokehouse

While the area may have changed, the menu at Arthur's has remained the same—no flat whites or avocados here. It's this, along with the flimsy line between the family's personal and professional lives (which tends to happen when you live and work in the same building) that has been the key to its success.

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As for the future of the cafe, it's likely to remain in the family, but surely by now Woodham is more than qualified to receive his carriage clock and golden handshake?

"What would I do if I retired?" he says. "I'd just land up drinking all day."

All photos by Dante Holdsworth.