Mother Mash Comfort Food in Carnaby: £15 Sausage and Mash

Mother Mash is at 26 Ganton Street, London W1F 7QZ, a few steps off Carnaby Street, and it is open every day from 12pm to 10pm. Its whole menu is one idea: a plate of freshly made mash with two sausages for £15 or a pie for £16, finished with the gravy of your choice. It has been doing exactly that in Soho since 2006, which makes it the simplest answer to a comfort food craving in the West End.

Ordering works in three steps printed on the menu. First pick a mash, then a sausage or pie, then a gravy. The mash is made with British Maris Piper potatoes and prepared fresh for each order, which is why there is no tray of it sitting under a lamp. Dairy-free mash is available if you ask, and you can request the gravy on the side.

The eight mash options are the fun part. Classic is natural mash with butter, cheesy adds mature cheddar, and cheesy mustard brings wholegrain mustard into it. Champ is the Irish version with cheddar and spring onions, colcannon folds in cabbage and onions, and horseradish mash is sharp enough to stand up to beef. Sweet potato with carrot and chilli is vegan, and bubble and squeak is fried mash with cabbage, peas and onions.

Then the gravies. Traditional uses the juices from the sausages and vegetables, classic chicken is a roast chicken gravy with herbs, and onion gravy is made from caramelised red and white Spanish onions. Farmer's gravy adds red wine, smoked bacon and mushrooms. Liquor is the traditional parsley sauce of the East End pie shops, and the veggie gravy is slow-cooked vegetables in stock.

A sausage plate brings two per serving, and an extra sausage is £2. The line-up covers Cumberland pork with pepper, pork and chilli with cumin and paprika, a London Smokey of smoked pork with honey, and the Mother Plucker, a chicken sausage with garlic and white wine. There is a vegan Lincolnshire and a vegetarian cheddar and spinach sausage, so mixed tables are easy to feed.

Pie choices include steak and Blackheart stout, chicken with mushroom and bacon, traditional minced beef and three meat-free options: roasted vegetable and chickpea, spiced vegetable and brie, and woodland mushroom with dark ale. For a first visit, order the steak and stout pie on champ with farmer's gravy, or a Cumberland pair on cheesy mustard mash with onion gravy. Add mushy peas for £2.95 to complete the plate.

An honest call: skip the super salads. The sticky sausage and sweet potato salad and the warm sausage salad are both £10.50 and perfectly decent, but nobody walks to Ganton Street for leaves. If you are sharing and want variety, an extra pie on the side costs £6.00, which gives two people a pie and sausages without ordering two full plates. Cauliflower cheese at £3.95 is the side worth that money.

Every dessert is £5.95 and comes with vanilla ice cream or custard. The British puddings are a saucy chocolate pudding, sticky toffee pudding with dates and toffee sauce, and bread and butter pudding made with brioche. The pie and crumble list adds apple pie, apple crumble, an apple and blackberry crumble in vegan pastry, and lemon meringue pie. Choose custard with the crumble and ice cream with the chocolate pudding.

Drinks are simple and fairly priced for Soho. A 330ml bottle of Harbour Helles lager from Cornwall is £6.25, London Pride is £6.75, and a glass of Viña Mues Tempranillo is £6. Sandford Orchards ciders from Devon are £6.95 a bottle, and English breakfast tea is £3.00. A kids meal is £7.00, which makes this one of the easier sit-down lunches in the area for families shopping on Carnaby Street.

The founder, Euan, spent the early 2000s selling bricks to builders' merchants in East London, and lunch often meant a traditional pie and mash shop with white tiles and marble tables. The idea was to bring that East End experience to the West End. After a few false starts he found a disused charity shop just off Carnaby Street, and the first Mother Mash opened there in 2006.

Within its first year the shop won a Time Out award for Best Cheap Eats, and Euan quit his sales job to work on potatoes full time. A bigger branch in the City of London closed after two difficult years, so the team focused on Carnaby before opening a second site in Covent Garden. The dining room still borrows from the Victorian pie shops: white subway tiles, marble tabletops and plenty of daylight.

The room is small and there is outside seating on Ganton Street, which is pleasant on a dry evening. The kitchen closes at 9:45pm, fifteen minutes before the doors, so a late plan should land by 9:30pm. Book a table through the website for a weekend lunch, when Carnaby shoppers fill the room. Note that the Carnaby shop has no wheelchair access, and neither does the Covent Garden branch.

If Ganton Street is full, the Covent Garden branch on New Row serves the same menu and is open until 10pm Monday to Saturday and until 8pm on Sunday. Prefer fish to mash? Poppies has a Soho branch on Old Compton Street, about ten minutes' walk east. Takeaway and click and collect are also available from Ganton Street if you would rather eat on a bench.

Address: 26 Ganton Street, London W1F 7QZ. Open Monday to Sunday from 12pm to 10pm, with the kitchen closing at 9:45pm. Sausage plates are £15, pie plates are £16 and every pudding is £5.95. Oxford Circus is the closest Underground station, and the walk takes you past Liberty and down Carnaby Street, with Kingly Court, the courtyard of cafés off Carnaby Street, close by for a coffee afterwards.

Book online, order delivery through Deliveroo, or collect from the counter. Dairy-free mash and vegan sausages are on request, and the menu carries a full allergy chart. When you want to compare cheap, filling dinners around Soho before committing to a queue, the Karpo APP can show what is open and close by in a couple of taps.