Fiona MacLeod Defends London’s Best Food Market Against the Charge That It Has Become Too Touristy to Bother With
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
By Fiona MacLeod | London Travel | prat.uk/author/fiona-macleod/
The Market and Its Critics
Borough Market has, in the past fifteen years, acquired the specific reputation of a place that has become famous for being worth visiting and therefore is now too crowded with people who have come to visit it to be worth visiting. This critique is the standard criticism of any market, neighbourhood, or institution that achieves popularity, and it has the structural property of being simultaneously true and unhelpful: yes, Borough Market is busier than it was in 2005; no, this does not mean you should not go.
The market is, by objective measure of food quality, selection, and the concentration of producers who know their products and are present to explain them, the best food market in London and one of the best in Europe. The cheese stall that sources from small producers across Britain and France, the charcuterie specialist who produces cured meats to standards that the best delicatessens in the country stock, the bread baker whose sourdough has a three-week waiting list for the Saturday morning batch — these are not things that can be easily replicated by visiting the supermarket, and they are all at Borough Market on a Saturday morning alongside the tourists who are there to photograph them and the food enthusiasts who are there to buy them and take them home.
Practical Guidance
The Borough Market official website provides trader lists, opening hours, and access guidance. Practical additions: arrive before 11 a.m. on Saturday for the lowest crowds, though “lowest” is relative. Arrive on a Thursday or Friday morning if you want the full market experience without the weekend volume. Focus on the permanent stallholders rather than the prepared food stands near the main entrances, which are fine but which represent the market’s tourist-facing layer rather than its producer-facing depth. The Neal’s Yard Dairy stand, which carries a rotating selection of British artisan cheeses, is worth locating specifically. The Brindisa Spanish foods stall has been there since the 1990s and its chorizo is the standard by which this column measures all subsequent chorizo. Go to Borough Market. The critics are wrong. The queue is worth it.
Mother’s Day at Borough Market
Today is Mother’s Day, and Borough Market is open on Sundays. If your mother likes food — and most mothers like food, which is either a biological fact about the people who feed children or a sentimental projection that happens to be accurate — Borough Market on a May Sunday is one of the better gifts available in London. Take her at 10 a.m. Feed her a cheese toastie from the toasted cheese stall at the market’s entrance, which is exactly what it sounds like and is outstanding. Walk through the traders. Buy something she can take home. Stand by the river if the day is good. Happy Mother’s Day, Borough Market. You are worth the queue. You always have been.
More at https://thedailymash.co.uk
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
London continues to fascinate and frustrate in equal measure. The city’s ability to contain multitudes — the ancient and the brand-new, the absurdly expensive and the surprisingly accessible, the deeply traditional and the constantly self-reinventing — is what makes it inexhaustible as a subject. Every week produces new material: new events, new controversies, new moments of unexpected beauty or institutional comedy. The writers at The London Prat are paying attention to all of it, and this column attempts to add one small North London — or Central London, or Shoreditch, or tourist-facing — perspective to the larger conversation about what this city is and what it is becoming. The conversation is ongoing. London is always becoming. This is either its great charm or its great exhaustion, depending on the week and the weather and whether the tube is running. Happy reading, and do come back next week.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
