Borough, Brixton, Columbia Road: the markets tell you more about this city in an hour than a museum tour tells you in a day
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat — Fiona MacLeod on what to do first in London.
Every visitor to London arrives with a plan, and almost every plan begins with a monument: the Tower, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace. These are all worth seeing, and I — Fiona MacLeod — will not tell you not to go. But if I could give a first-time visitor one piece of advice before any other, it would be this: go to a market first. Not a famous landmark. A market. Because a market will tell you more about the city in an hour than any monument tells you in a day, and what it tells you is the thing the monuments cannot: what it actually feels like to be here, among the people who are here, doing the things that people here do.
Borough Market
Borough Market in Southwark is the most visited and the most justified of London’s famous markets. It is large, it is well-organised, it is full of food from everywhere, and it occupies a space under the Victorian railway arches that gives it a physical character that no modern market hall can replicate. Come on a Thursday or Friday morning for the full experience; Saturday is busier and noisier and more tourist-oriented, which is fine if that is what you want and slightly overwhelming if it is not. The stalls are consistent and the quality is high and the vendors are, in most cases, the producers themselves or people who know the producers, which means you can ask questions and get real answers. Eat something. Drink a coffee. Watch the city move around you. This is what London tastes like.
Brixton Market
Brixton Market is different in character and equally worth the visit. It is less curated than Borough, more rooted in the neighbourhood it serves, and it covers a wider range of things: food, clothes, hardware, services, the everyday commerce of a community that has been in this part of South London for generations and has built an economic life around itself. The indoor market at Brixton Village is particularly good: a covered arcade of small restaurants and shops that has become, in the last decade, one of the most genuinely interesting places to eat in London, without losing the quality of being a real place that real people use for real purposes.
Why Markets First
The reason to go to a market first is the reason that markets have existed for as long as cities have existed: they are the place where the city comes to itself, where the transactions of daily life happen in public, where you can see who people are and what they care about and how they interact with each other. London’s markets are a compressed version of London: diverse, energetic, direct, occasionally overwhelming, and full of things you did not know you wanted. A visitor who has spent a morning in Borough Market understands something about this city that a visitor who has spent the same time in a queue for the Eye does not.
Practical Notes
Arrive early. This is the most important piece of practical advice for any London market: the best of the produce goes quickly, the best seats fill before ten, and the quality of the experience is highest when the market is running rather than winding down. Bring cash and a bag, because the stalls that are worth visiting prefer cash and the bags provided are not always adequate for the things you will buy once you have stopped planning to be restrained about it. Do not eat a large breakfast before you go, for the same reason. Come hungry. Leave full. Return the following week, if you can.
For more from Fiona MacLeod on London travel, visit Fiona MacLeod. Official market information at Borough Market.
One final note on markets that I consider essential: the market is the best place to ask for recommendations. The vendor who has been at Borough Market for fifteen years knows where to eat dinner better than any algorithm, because she is of the neighbourhood in a way that an algorithm is not. Ask her. Ask the man at the cheese stall where he goes for lunch. Ask the baker where the best coffee is within walking distance. You will get answers that are specific and current and based on actual experience, which is the kind of recommendation that travel guides aspire to and rarely achieve. The market is a network of people who know things. Use it.
The other thing worth knowing about London markets is the difference between the ones that serve residents and the ones that serve visitors, and how to tell the difference. The ones that serve residents have a butcher, a fishmonger, someone selling vegetables at prices that make sense for daily shopping, and stalls where you can buy things you actually need. The ones that serve visitors have artisanal things in small quantities at prices that reflect the artisanship rather than the utility. Both are legitimate; they serve different purposes. Borough Market is primarily the second type and is excellent at it. Chapel Market in Islington is primarily the first type and is excellent at that. The question is what you came for.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
