A husband and wife team hope their East End dishes will put a smile on Gravesend faces.

Simon and Donna Maylam, both 48, opened their shop Sie’s Pie and Mash in the St. George’s Shopping Centre on Thursday and are now looking forward to seeing punters regularly tuck in to their traditional cuisine.

The restaurant will offer a very English menu, with bangers and mash, jellied eels and tasty sweet treats, including spotted dick, for people to enjoy.

Sie’s is the only pie and mash shop in town and the London couple said they came to Gravesend for that very reason.

Donna said: “You haven’t got anything like this here so we thought it was a good time to offer people something different.

“There’s a lot of Londoners who have moved down to Kent and we’ve had people walk past who have said ‘I’m from the East End and I can’t wait for you to open’.”

All of the pies are handmade by Simon on site, in a room above the shop, and each batch takes around three hours to make from scratch.

As is traditional with a proper pie and mash shop, only one type of mincemeat pie is on offer.

This type of fare runs in the family for the Maylam’s with other relatives running a restaurant in Eltham that has been serving up such dishes for 26 years.

Donna said: “My auntie used to live in East Street so I was brought up on pie and mash and sarsaparilla.

"We’re doing traditional English dishes so it’s like a comfort food for people.”