“WE WANT TO DO THE CLASSICS REALLY WELL BUT GIVE THE CHEFS LICENCE TO DO THINGS THEY’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT”

Words: Tomé Morrissy-Swan / Images: Matthew Hague

Every day at Applebee’s, one of the team is up by 6am, ready for an online auction from Brixham Market in Devon. Bids fly in for fish landed that very same morning. Those fish will arrive in SE1 within 24 hours.

“It gives us the best produce at the best price, it’s a huge win for everyone,” says Jack Applebee, the restaurant’s CEO. “Operationally, it’s quite difficult. You don’t know what you’re going to get – it’s the law of the sea really. Hake, for example: one week a month the tides are wrong, and they can’t catch it.” But this approach is harder than simply going via a wholesaler, it means the restaurant can offer the best, freshest and most seasonal fish at the best value possible.

Applebee’s had a glamorous relaunch this February, offering a more “refined” take on a seafood restaurant, says Jack. Borough Market’s cadre of restaurants has earned renown of late, from the newly Michelin-starred Oma to Cynthia Shanmugalingam’s Rambutan. Now it has a seafood restaurant to match – one rooted in classic British and French cooking, elevated by modern creativity and flare.

A butterflied mullet comes swimming in a delicate bouillabaisse sauce. A whole stuffed sea bream is expertly cooked, flesh pearlescent and flaky, stuffed with spicy potatoes and surrounded by excellent curry sauce. On today’s specials board, a dry-aged dover sole meunière is one of the best examples you’ll find anywhere in London, with a beautiful butter, caper and brown shrimp sauce. The cooking from executive chef Frankie van Loo, who recently joined after several years working for Jason Atherton, is superb.

Applebee’s was one of the original Borough Market traders, opening in 1999 when the market was reborn in its current guise. Jack’s parents, Joy and Graham, began as fishmongers then set up a street food operation a few years later, as the market increasingly began to cater to those seeking cooked food. Jack joined in 2015, aged 22, by which time Applebee’s was primarily a restaurant, having opened in its current Stoney Street location just before the 2008 financial crash. “It seemed wise to double down on the restaurant side rather than pushing the fishmonger’s,” says Jack. “I’d love to revitalise the fishmonger’s, but it’s difficult to operate as a full-blown fishmonger with a restaurant operation.”

The ethos has always been the same: the best and freshest British seafood. Around 85 percent of the produce sourced by the restaurant is British, and the majority of the fish comes from Cornwall and Devon. By cutting out middlemen, Jack believes Applebee’s is able to offer good value while keeping the supply chain short and transparent. “We’re just doing what we can to keep the prices as sensible as possible. When you buy seafood through intermediates rather than going direct, you’re in the hands of someone, and you don’t really know the journey of the fish,” says Jack, who points out sourcing this way can result in fish that’s several days old by the time it reaches the diner’s plate.

Running a Borough Market restaurant is a unique experience in London, says Jack, who founded the family’s sister operation, a Spanish tapas restaurant called La Gamba on the Southbank, in 2023. Applebee’s location attracts a blend of regulars, office workers, hardcore foodies and tourists. The menu reflects that, mixing the likes of grilled monkfish tail and tranche of turbot with British favourites including fish and chips and fish pie.

“We’re still trying to work out the balance,” Jack explains. “We want something we’re proud of. Any of the classics we do, we try to make the best you can have. The best fish and chips, the best dover sole meunière. We’re not super traditional, but we are traditional in a way. We’ve been here around 25 years, and we want to do the classics really well but to give the chefs creative licence to do things they’re really passionate about.”

Despite its newly smartened site (Applebee’s still runs a seafood hut in the market selling more casual grab-and-go dishes) it remains a family affair. Joy does the accounts, Jack’s brother Harry is one of the restaurant’s fishmongers, and another brother, Matt, is the general manager at La Gamba. Two cousins currently work at Applebee’s. “If someone needs a job, we’re always there for them. I can’t think of a member of our family who hasn’t worked for us at least a day.”

In the coming months, Jack hopes to push lesser-known species. Britons are relatively unadventurous when it comes to seafood, especially compared with our Mediterranean counterparts. That wonderful bouillabaisse sauce is made with red mullet and gurnard, two underappreciated species the latter of which Jack is particularly keen to push. “We would love people to know what a gurnard is and want to order it. We want to bring in gurnard, whiting, things people don’t order much but can be really good. We want to educate people, slowly but surely.”

He hopes to change the menus frequently, with monthly tweaks. While the specials board will highlight the best seasonal fish based on what has been caught the day before. “If we see really good value turbot or john dory, we’re going to buy it. Or mackerel, or red mullet. Being able to do that is fantastic.”

For now, though, Jack is “very happy with how the relaunch has gone. The team has been brilliant in adapting to the changes. We’ve had some amazing feedback from our regulars.” Applebee’s 2.0 is emerging as one of the city’s best seafood restaurants – one set to grace the Borough Market scene for many more years to come. 

“AS A SMALL BUSINESS, WE’RE ABLE TO WORK ON SOURCING QUALITY OVER QUANTITY, AND THAT’S THE BIG DIFFERENCE”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Images: Sim Canetty-Clarke, RED Agency

How did you come to be a fishmonger?

I used to run a pub just round the corner from here. It didn’t open at weekends, so I would to come to the market on a Saturday. I’d get some oysters, have a pint of Guinness over in the Market Porter, and just soak it all up. I was always fascinated by the way Les Salisbury, the owner of Furness Fish Markets, used to put his counter out. I’d watch him setting up. It was something I hadn’t seen before – definitely one of the most attractive stands in terms of the colours. I’ve always been interested in fishing – I used to fish as a kid, over at Hampstead Heath. Anyway, my life circumstances changed, and Les ended up offering me a job. That was 20 years ago. The rest is history, as they say.

The fish counter is still a thing of beauty. Who’s responsible for that?

When I first started here, Les wouldn’t let anybody else touch the counter. About 10 years ago he let go of the reins a little bit and handed it over to me. Now I’ve handed it down to one of my guys, Harry. It’s a real art. It’s like a painting: the contrast of colours, textures, different levels of ice, bits of wood, other decoration. It can take anything up to two hours. It’s got a bit more difficult recently because the fish isn’t as cheap as it used to be, so we buy a little more frugally – you can’t afford to waste anything – but we still make it look amazing. It only works because of the quality of the fish, and that comes down to the sourcing. I believe the reason for our success over 20-odd years is that we really do pride ourselves on quality.

How does your approach to sourcing affect the quality of the fish you sell?

It’s all about the process. I remember reading about these big American fisheries that fish for the supermarkets. They catch a load of fish out in the North Atlantic. The boat’s out there fishing for about five days at a time. When they dock, they send the catch off to China to be processed and packed. From there, it’s sent on to a distribution centre in the UK, where they repackage it and send it out again. That can be a 10-day process. By the time it’s on the shelves, that fish is nearly at the end of its life. As a small business, we’re able to work on sourcing quality over quantity, and that’s the big difference. If I’m getting my fish from the Shetland Islands, it’s here in two days.

How do you avoid waste?

It’s about getting the ordering right, it’s about the turnover of stock, how you manage your fridge. We’re also blessed with the paella. The last thing I want is for one of our customers to take a piece of fish home, leave it in their fridge for another couple of days and it be no good. At that point, I’ll put it into the paella, so the paella changes from day to day, week to week.

As spring gets underway, what should people be looking out for on the Furness Fish Markets stand?

For me personally, coming into spring and summer, it’s always going to be about sea bass and mackerel. I can’t wait to get my hands on a really nice Cornish day-boat sea bass. Mackerel is also just coming back into season. They migrate twice a year, once for food purposes and once for reproducing. There’s nothing like fresh mackerel. It’s fat, it’s plump, it’s firm. The inside will be grey, almost translucent, not flaky and brown like the pre-filleted stuff you find. For me, there’s nothing better than fresh mackerel chargrilled on a barbecue, so I love it when spring comes around. Brown trout will be coming soon to the counter. That’s amazing. You’re also going to get wild sea trout through May until August. That’s amazing too.

So, do you fillet everything on site?

Yes, we buy whole fish and we fillet here. If you buy fillets in, the quality is terrible. It’s a real skill. When I was young, my mum would say: “You need to get a trade.” Back then, I wouldn’t have thought about this. My dad was a mechanic, my uncle’s an electrician, another uncle works for BT. But this is a trade too. Once you’ve learned it, you can go anywhere in the world and use it. If you can handle a knife, if you can fillet a fish, if you know a bit about fish and fishing, you’ll always find work. I’m in a different role now within the company, so I’m not on the block as much as I used to be, but when I get the chance, I do love it.

There are so few fishmongers left these days. Are some people a little intimidated by what’s on offer?

Our counter can be very daunting for some people. There are certain things we have on here that you’re never going to see in a supermarket. That’s why it’s so important that we talk to people. I’m on at my guys all the time: if someone walks into that shop, you have to engage with them. “How are you doing? Is there anything I can do for you?”

Presumably that means everyone in your team needs to know a lot about preparing and cooking fish.

That’s the business. You have to be able to educate people. You have to know what you’re talking about. If you tell a customer something and they go home and it’s no good, they’re not going to come back.
When I came here, I had no idea about cooking fish. But what I’ve learnt over the years is, it’s so simple. I don’t really season fish – when it’s good, I want to really taste it. A little bit of pepper, a little bit of lemon when it’s cooked, but that’s all you need. It’s the speed as well – you can cook a sea bass fillet in four or five minutes, and you’ve got your dinner ready.

“ACROSS THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN THERE ARE ALL THESE HUGE CONNECTIONS BUT ALSO INCREDIBLE LOCAL NUANCES”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Images: Joe Woodhouse

Arabica has been synonymous with Borough Market since 1999, the first full year that a dying wholesale fruit and veg market burst back into life as a magnet for food lovers. Populated by a small community of specialist retail traders, it was, in the words of James Walters, “something we’d not seen before on these shores, something truly magical”.

Among those pioneering early traders was Jad, a warm, charismatic Jordanian man, who came here every Saturday to sell homemade meze and spice blends. James, a young chef, joined him shortly afterwards in an entertainingly offbeat sequence of events that bore zero resemblance to a career plan – and it was James, a roaring turbine of energy and ambition, who become the business’s driving force.

His first restaurant, Café Arabica, sprang up in west London in 2002 to glowing reviews, but closed after a couple of years, its owners too young, skint and overstretched to navigate the sector’s unforgiving economics. In June 2014, Arabica Bar & Kitchen opened at Borough, and this time James was fully prepared. It’s been here ever since, acclaimed for its vibrant eastern Mediterranean cuisine, complemented by a street food stand and a thriving online business.

Arabica’s colourful 26-year tale is told in James’s debut cookbook, Arabica: Small Plates, Big Connections, the story playing out through his recipes and reminiscences. These are brought to life by stunning images of people, places and food, captured over the years by Joe Woodhouse, one of many regular collaborators who have shaped Arabica’s identity. “A hell of a lot of people have contributed to this journey,” says James. “I’ve learnt so much from them. I’ve done my best to channel it all into the book.”

Has food always been important to you?

Yes, since I was a kid. My first memory of cooking is when I was seven or eight and made my parents an anniversary meal: steak with tinned petit pois. My grandfather had Wimpy bars in the late 60s and early 70s and my grandparents on my mother’s side both loved to cook. I cooked with them as a child – lots of fingers in bowls. Later, in my teens, I remember asking my mum what was for dinner, and then asking if I could have all the ingredients so I could cook my own version. I used every pot and pan in the process – really enthusiastic about the cooking, not so much the washing up. She tolerated me tearing the kitchen to pieces every night though, because she knew I loved it.

So, how did you come to be involved with a Levantine food business in Borough Market?

It started in Borneo, of all places, halfway up Mount Kinabalu. The night before scaling the summit, I met an English couple in the refuge, both teachers from Brockley. I was travelling alone, and it was the first proper conversation I’d had for a few days. We got talking about food. They said: “Have you heard about this food market that’s started in Borough? It’s amazing.” We agreed that we’d meet at the market when we got back to London. I remember it was a spring morning, and I got there early and sat on the pavement with a coffee, just watching everything. I watched the banter, watched the stalls unpack, watched the traders getting set up. There’s something beautiful about that.

Beautiful in what way?

Every new city I go to, I get up early in the morning and go to the food market. I’ve done it all over the world. You breathe it all in, the noise and the smells. You get a sense of where you are, what people are eating, how they’re behaving. You just suck it all up and it’s a magical thing. That morning at Borough, I was like: “This place is amazing.” Quality food, provenance led, shoppers who wanted something more than a supermarket. I’d found my place. One of the stalls we stopped at was Jad’s. He was there behind a little fold-up table, with three or four meze, bread, olive oil and some za’atar. I tasted it: I dipped the bread into the oil, then into the za’atar, and it was like “bang”. Explosion. Then we started talking. Jad was such a good conversationalist, and I had so many questions. I was kind of mesmerised by him – big aura, lots of love, a real giver, very generous with his time and ideas. Anyway, we took each other’s numbers.

What were you doing at the time?

I was working as a chef, but with no formal training. As a kid, I was expelled from school. Looking back, it was likely a mix of old-school teaching methods and undiagnosed ADHD tendencies, but at the time, I was simply labelled the ‘naughty kid’ – always in trouble, always restless. I dropped out and got a job at Bluebird Café, but that only lasted six months. I didn’t like the hierarchy, hated the way the sous-chefs talked to me. After a couple other short-lived roles, I was working in a pub in Camberwell. I was having this real struggle, because I was so passionate about cooking, but knew that if I stayed working in these environments it was going to end up killing that love. I found myself going to the Market every Saturday. One day I got the courage up to call Jad and say: “What time do you finish up? Could I come and help you pack down?” We went to the pub that evening with all the other traders, had a beautiful time, met all these characters. I knew I’d found my tribe. The next week asked Jad if I could come down every Saturday and help out for free.

How did you go from unpaid helper to a partner in the business?

Not long after I got here, Borough started allowing hot food one day a week. At first, Jad started selling tagines, but after a few months he pulled me aside and said: “Listen, I’ve got an idea. I’ll teach you how to make falafel. Keep whatever you make, and when the falafel makes as much money as the meze, we’re partners.” That was the deal. I bought a hand mincer with a tiny little hopper, frustratingly tiny. I had a small saucepan, a slotted spoon and a kilo of chickpeas. At the end of the first day I had £100. Week two I bought three kilos of chickpeas and a bigger fryer and still sold out in an hour. After a couple of months I was able to buy a mincer. Every week we sold more and more. It was on the Queen’s Jubilee that I absolutely smashed it out the park. There was a celebration weekend at Smithfield and a selection of traders were invited from Borough Market. We made so much money, Jad was like: “Well, I guess we’re partners!”

When did you first visit the eastern Mediterranean?

It was the summer of 2005. Until that point, everything I knew had been passed down to me by Jad. After Café Arabica closed, the two of us took a trip to Jordan for a few weeks of repairing and healing. We went out to the desert. We collected milk to make labneh. We picked beautiful Persian cucumbers off the tree to be eaten 10 minutes later. We picked vine leaves off the vines. We cooked these amazing meals with Jad’s sister – experiencing that food culture first-hand in someone’s home is such a privilege. We played backgammon and drank mint tea. One day we took day trip to Syria, to Damascus, a city bursting with history. I’ll never forget wandering through its breathtaking souks – a sensory overload of colours, spices and energy.

What is it that appeals to you so much about the region’s food?

I’ve always had a natural appreciation of Mediterranean food. I love simplicity on a plate. In that part of the world, there can be a lot of ingredients in some recipes, but there aren’t these complex cooking techniques. It’s much more about quality: take a really good tomato, put some good olive oil on it and some nice salt and let that tomato shout. The Mediterranean is so interesting because they share a lot of the same approaches. Depending on where you are – village to village, family to family and across the region – there are all these huge connections but also these incredible local nuances. At Arabica, we call what we do ‘eastern Mediterranean’ because it doesn’t confine us in the same way that homing in on a particular country would. It allows you to be creative and blur boundaries.

Does that stop people arguing with you about authenticity?  

No. We do this chicken and pistachio shish, one of the most popular dishes on our menu. We’ll get people who come in and go: “This isn’t shish.” What does ‘shish’ mean? It means skewer. Does it have a skewer in it? Yes. Could you get all the ingredients at a local market in Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey? Yes. So, it’s a shish. But it’s not the way their grandmother did it, so it’s not right. Everyone’s so passionate: “My mum’s kleftiko is better than yours” or “Uncle so-and-so is the best on the barbecue”. I love that passion, though. You have to agree to disagree and be open to exchanging ideas. That’s what makes food so exciting.

One thing that every part of the region shares is an emphasis on hospitality. That must make your travels all the more enjoyable.

I’ll tell you the funniest thing about one of my first meals in Jordan. We’re all sitting on the floor together, with a bowl of fresh labneh, homemade pickles, a fattoush salad and this massive plate of beautiful stuffed vine leaves. When I finish my first plate, they top me up with a second. Then a third. I don’t want to be rude, so even though I’m full, I’m slowly getting through it. It gets to the point where I’m rolling onto the floor, moaning, about to explode, and they’re all laughing their heads off. Jad’s sister Rada, with this little glint in her eye, leans over and pops one last stuffed vine leaf into my mouth. Finally, Jad says: “By the way James, you have to leave a little bit of food on your plate to symbolise that you’ve been well looked after. If you finish it, they think they haven’t done a good job.” I had no idea!

Arabica: Small Plates, Big Connections by James Walters (Carnival) is available now at The Borough Market Store

“WHISKING THE MATCHA IS ALMOST LIKE A MOMENT OF BLOOMING, WHEN THE FLAVOUR COMES OUT IN ITS TRUEST FORM”

Interview: Mark Riddaway

It was while growing up in Hong Kong that Otto Boyer first discovered matcha. “We spent a lot of time visiting Japan,” he explains. “My parents had lived out there and my dad speaks Japanese.” Matcha – an energising beverage with a vivid pea-green colour – has for hundreds of years been deeply embedded in Japanese culture. Having fallen in love with the drink, Otto struggled with its relative scarcity in London. “Over here, I wanted to have matcha as an option in my day-to-day routine, but it was so hard to find.”

His solution to this problem was certainly a robust one: co-founding a business that imports single origin matcha from Uji, close to the historic Japanese city of Kyoto, and sells it through four London-based matcha bars, the newest of which, Whisk by JENKI, opened in Borough Market in 2024. “My wife Claudia and I set up JENKI about five years ago,” says Otto. “We weren’t married at the time, and it felt like a big gamble. We knew that either our relationship wouldn’t survive, or the business wouldn’t survive, or that both would be great.” Thankfully for them – and for the London’s growing ranks of matcha afficionados – it’s very much the latter.

Let’s start with the basics. What is matcha?

In simple terms, matcha is very finely ground green tea leaves. With other types of tea, you’re typically steeping the leaves before discarding them completely and drinking what’s left behind. With matcha, you’re ingesting the whole of the tea leaf. Matcha can be made elsewhere around the world but the best matcha is made in Japan, using a method developed over hundreds of years. It’s the same plant used for other teas – the Camellia sinensis plant – but you’re only picking the smallest, sweetest, most succulent leaves at the top. You’re steaming, drying, deveining and de-stemming the tea leaf itself, then grinding it into an ultra-fine powder using traditional stone mills. It takes an hour to manufacture 30 grams of matcha, so it’s a time-intensive process.

Is all matcha made that way?

No, there’s a huge range of quality. A lot of what is sold as matcha on the high street is made in China using methods that aren’t even close to the traditional Japanese production process – it’s really just ground-up green tea. It ends up being this muddy brown product, with quite an earthy, bitter taste. What we’re trying to do is educate the London consumer as to what quality matcha can taste like. We sell what is commonly referred to as ceremonial-grade matcha – the highest grade – but even within that bracket there’s a lot of variation. A matcha sourced from Uji will taste quite different to a matcha sourced down in Kagoshima, which has a more tropical climate and different soils. Every producer has their own tea master, whose job it is to blend the tea to create the flavour profile they’re looking for. It’s a true artform.

How would you characterise the profile of the matcha you sell?

It’s very approachable – mellow and smooth with sweet, nutty and slightly umami notes. We’ve purposefully chosen one that isn’t too bitter and punchy so that it’s accessible to a matcha newbie. When we first started JENKI, we toured around a lot of different farms trying to find the ideal supplier. We wanted a family-run farm that was still using very traditional methods, milling the matcha using stone mills. We love that we’re championing that sense of heritage, but mostly it’s about the quality – modern machines simply can’t create the same texture. We’ve never found a matcha that can compare to how smooth and mellow ours is.

As an energising drink, how does matcha compare with coffee?

I’ve been an avid coffee drinker in the past, but I can’t drink coffee after lunchtime. Matcha has a different concentration of caffeine and contains a compound called L-theanine which acts as a caffeine uptake regulator. So, instead of a sharp jittery spike followed by a crash that makes you think you need another coffee, matcha offers five or six hours of caffeinated energy with a very gradual uplift and a very slow tapering off. It’s longer lasting, but that gradual uplift will give you a calmer, more focused energy. When we started in 2021 with our first bar in Spitalfields, we also served coffee as a way of pulling people in. We’d then ambush them with a crash course in what matcha was and why they should try it. Pretty soon, we were able to ditch the coffee and people kept coming back for the matcha.

While the matcha you use is produced in an age-old way, your menu is far broader and more creative than you’d find in a traditional Japanese tea house. What’s your thinking?

Part of what we’re trying to do is make matcha a little more accessible to people who are used to drinking coffee. The traditional Japanese style, just matcha with water, we call a ‘matchacano’. We have matcha lattes and a ‘flat green’, which is basically a flat white with matcha. Most of the products we sell are straight-up matchas, but we’re also trying to appeal to a younger generation who want sweetness, colour and creativity and are interested in health benefits, hence our shakes, syrups and boosts.

You hand whisk every single order. What does that involve?

The traditional way to prepare matcha is with a bamboo whisk in a bowl with warm water – not boiling water, as that will burn it. Whisking releases the full flavour within – it’s almost like a moment of blooming, when the flavour comes out in its truest form. You’ve got to work it quite vigorously, resulting in a foamy solution full of bubbles, with no lumps anywhere. Some bars will prepare their matcha in batches in a blender, but it’s just not the same. We insist on doing it to order.

How did you go about establishing your business?

Claudia and I started by doing some small pop-ups in markets. We did our first one in Brick Lane, which was a disaster – we were there on a Saturday morning with a health product, and everybody else was there looking for greasy hangover cures. That was an eye-opener. We then did a pop-up in Old Street station the week before Covid arrived. Covid was a time where we could really focus on what our offering should be. We opened our first bar in July 2021. We didn’t have any employees apart from me, Claudia and my younger brother. I think we did four and a half months behind the bar, seven days a week straight. We’re in a very different place now. We’ve got nearly 80 people in the team, working across four bars. We’ve now got two identical twins as well, so there’s a lot going on!

As you grow, what kind of employer do you want to be?

Actually, the process of onboarding with Borough Market was really interesting, as the questions they asked made us really think about the standards we want to uphold as employers. Paying the London Living Wage, as an example, is really important to us. Building a work culture we can be proud of is also really important. We want people to enjoy coming to work. Ensuring we find ways of continuing to make that happen is probably one of the most satisfying parts of growing a business.

“I HAD LITERALLY NO EXPERIENCE OF BUTCHERY. BUT NOW THAT I’M DOING IT, I REALLY LOVE IT”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Portrait: Orlando Gili

Of all the food-related professions, butchery is among the most conspicuously male. With its knives and saws, blood and viscera, it has for hundreds of years been deemed the domain of men, and it mostly remains that way. There is, of course, no logical reason why a woman can’t become as accomplished a butcher as any burly bloke, but not many consider this ancient craft as a potential career. Chloe Stygall, assistant manager of Borough Market’s Ginger Pig butcher’s shop, certainly didn’t. “This wasn’t necessarily something I ever thought I’d be doing!” she says with a laugh.

For several years, Chloe had been working as a server for one of the Market’s continental food importers. In that time, she’d become friendly with Isaac, the manager of the Ginger Pig stand, and it was he who suggested she make a new start. “I’d reached a point where I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with my life,” she recalls. “He said: ‘Well, why don’t you come here and try this for a little while, just to see if you like it?’” And like it she most certainly did. “Obviously, I really love and care about food – that’s one of the reasons I wanted to work in the market in the first place – but it was still a bit of a swerve! I had literally no experience of butchery. But now that I’m doing it, I really love it.”

What is it about the work that appeals to you so much?

I hope this doesn’t sound too weird, but I love how tactile it is. I love how much you rely on touch and feel. I really enjoy working with my hands and doing something physical and skilled. I also love the sense of achievement you get at doing it well. When you’re breaking down a carcass and getting the different joints out, then tying it all up for the window, making it look good and seeing the end product of your work, it’s such a satisfying feeling. Also, I love the amount I’ve learnt about cooking. I didn’t really eat much meat before I started working here, but that’s completely changed now!

So, have you learnt your craft on the job rather than through formal training?

Yes – and I’m still learning, every single day. I started by just trimming out the offcuts for mince and then worked my way up to the bigger cuts, eventually all the way up to the whole carcass stuff. I’m not doing a qualification or anything like that, I’m just meeting the demands of the job and learning from the experienced people around me. We sell quite specific things in the shop, because of its location and clientele, so while I’m now good with those cuts, there’s an awful lot I still have to learn. It never ends, but that’s one of the great things about it.

To be the best possible butcher, do you need to have people skills as well as knife skills?

I think you do. A big part of working in a butcher’s shop is that people are always asking you how to prepare and cook things. They want recipes, timings, temperatures and lots of other advice, so being able to figure it all out for so many different cuts of meat and then relay that knowledge in a way that’s easy to understand is really important. I enjoy that aspect a lot, and it’s made me a much better cook along the way.

What do you do if people come in asking for unusual cuts that you don’t have out on the counter?

We’ll always endeavour to get stuff in for people if they’re looking for something specific, although there will be times where we’re not able to do that. A lot of international customers will come in asking for a specific cut that I’ve got no idea about. That’s when you do a bit of googling to see if it translates into something more familiar. That does happen quite often. Again, I’m always learning!

Even in this day and age, it’s unusual to see a female butcher. Do you ever feel judged on the basis of your sex?

Yes, absolutely, 100 percent. Quite often I’ll start serving someone, and they’ll ignore me and begin talking to one of the men, because it’s the men who fit their image of a what a proper butcher should be. There are two female butchers in our shop, and I’m actually the assistant manager, but some customers will always gravitate to one of the guys.

There is a flip side, though. Isaac, the manager here, has tried really hard to change the dynamics of the shop by taking chances on people who you wouldn’t traditionally find in a butcher’s shop. I know for a fact that certain customers are more comfortable coming here as a result. Personally, before working here, I would have felt a bit intimidated by the thought of going into a butcher’s shop and not really knowing what to ask for, and a lot of people are the same. I’ve had quite a lot of female customers tell me how refreshing it is to see a woman behind the block and how much more relaxed they feel about coming in and asking questions. I think that’s great.

At Ginger Pig, you spend your days working with high-quality meat from animals that have been raised with care. Has that changed your own shopping and eating habits?

Totally. Working here has given me much more of an understanding of how animals are raised and what impact that has, on them and on the meat. Here, you can see and feel the quality. We know where everything has come from, who’s produced it and the conditions it was produced in. I just wouldn’t buy meat from a supermarket now. To be honest, it’s just a completely different thing.

What are some of the more unusual meats you enjoy that you would encourage other people to seek out?

The pigeons – we get these really nice farmed pigeons. I don’t think enough people realise quite how delicious pigeon can be. The other thing I’ve discovered is onglet, which is a cut of beef. It’s a skirt steak, but it hangs internally, so it’s got a richer, more iron-y flavour to it. Kind of offal-y. That’s really good. You have to sear it very quickly on a very high heat. It can be slightly unforgiving if you get it wrong, but if you cook it quickly and then cut it against the grain it’s so tender and so delicious.

You’ve been working at the market for many years now. What is it about the environment that keeps you coming back?

It’s just a really lovely community, a really lovely vibe. Everyone looks after each other. I’ve met lots of friends working here. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

IWD

“IT’S STILL MADE BY HAND EVERY SINGLE WEEK, LESS THAN A MILE AWAY. THE ONLY THING THAT’S CHANGED IS THE VOLUME”

Interview: Mark Riddaway

Flip Dunning has a vivid memory of the moment her life changed. “I’d been at a wedding and got in really late, about two or three in the morning. There was a Borough Market envelope on the mat. and I thought, after this everything could be different. I could barely open it, my hand was shaking so much. I pulled the letter out a bit, and I could see the word ‘Congratulations’. I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, this is it, I’ve done it.’”

It was almost 20 years ago, after a comprehensive, nerve-shredding application process, that Flip made the leap from food-loving advertising executive to founder and sole employee of Pâté Moi, a mushroom pâté business and a trader at London’s most famous produce market. She’s been here ever since, selling her magical handmade pâté and, despite its stellar popularity, resisting any temptation to turn her small, hands-on business into something more corporate.

Where did your love of food come from?

In my family we were born cooking, all of us. My dad was a huge cook, my mum was a huge cook, we ate brilliantly as kids, we tried absolutely everything. We had our own hens, grew our own veg, baked our own bread. I was already really into food by about the age of five. I was a massive anchovy eater. For my eighth birthday I asked for my breakfast, lunch and dinner to be anchovies! By the age of 10 or 11 I was making my own anchoïade – you mash some anchovies in a pestle and mortar, with garlic, a drop of brandy, black pepper, thyme, a little lemon juice, and some butter. Pound it all together and spread it on some really good baguette. That was my childhood snack!

You grew up in Cheshire. What brought you to London?

I came to do an English literature degree at UCL. While I was at uni, I did lots and lots of cooking – it was too expensive to eat out, so we’d host parties in our flat. I’d bake the bread, I’d make the soup, cook a main course. That’s when I started making the mushroom pâté. It was my brother who originally invented the recipe when he was eight. Everyone loved it. I remember one of my really good friends saying to me: “Oh my God, you should sell this!” That lodged in my brain for years.

Your very first step into the food world was your application for a stall at Borough Market. What led you to apply?

I worked in advertising for about nine years, still cooking all the time, and I used to come to Borough Market a lot – every Saturday. At the end of the day, I’d see everyone packing up their stalls, folding up their tablecloths, and I remember thinking how much I would love the satisfaction of making something of my own thing, selling it, and then finishing for the day. My old job took me all over the world, it was very intensive, but you never really had that moment of completion, of satisfaction. I decided I wanted to make my mushroom pâté and I wanted to sell it here. It was a complete leap into the unknown!

What do you remember of your first day of trading?

After I was accepted, my dad died, and it was absolutely terrible. I wrote to Borough by hand. I told them how much it had meant to me to be offered this chance, and how dad had encouraged me with food all my life. Would they let me delay my start? They wrote me the most amazing letter back offering their sympathy and saying that they were going to keep my place open for a year. I started on 8th September 2006. It was a blue-sky day, really cold. I set out my stall and waited. My first customer was an American man. I’ve never forgotten him. He picked up a sample and tasted it. I just watched. I couldn’t breathe. “Oh my God,” he said. “That’s one of the nicest things I’ve ever tasted.” He bought my first pot. I phoned my mum straight away to tell her! From that moment I never looked back. I’d sold out by 1pm and had to work all through the night to make enough for the next day!

Compared with that first pot, how different is the pâté you’re selling now?

It’s identical. Made by hand every single week, less than a mile away in my kitchen in Bermondsey. The only thing that’s changed is the volume I make, but it’s all still made by hand, by me. I’ve also extended the range. I do a dairy and gluten-free version, and one with truffle, which was originally a special edition, but it sold like hot cakes, so I kept it on.

Your pâté has developed a cult following. What’s the secret?

I use brilliant ingredients. There’s nowhere to hide if you’re making such a simple product. It all starts with great-quality mushrooms from Suffolk. The tamari I use is the best organic, non-GMO, double-fermented tamari you can buy – I could use one that’s two-thirds the price, but I wouldn’t get that flavour depth. Even my lemons are organic. I cook my mushrooms very slowly, for a long, long time, until all the liquid is absorbed. I will not cut corners. I make it fresh, and I don’t use preservatives – the onion and lemon essentially act as the preservatives.

While running an extremely hands-on business, you’ve also been a single mum to your daughter. How have you managed that?

She’s been with me on the stall since she was little. She learnt all her maths adding up the sales and counting my change out. She’s now 16 and knows everything about the pâté, inside and out – and thank god she likes mushrooms! What’s great is that she’s grown up seeing a woman doing every single aspect of the business. A food business isn’t just about making the product, it’s about managing those you work with, it’s about the logistics, the sourcing, the seasonal shifts, being on top of orders, the payroll, the tax, there are so many different things to do. I’ve had to learn these entire skillsets myself. I’m glad she’s seen that.

Is Borough Market a good environment for a female business owner?

Oh, I love it, and it’s never been more supportive than it is now. It’s changed a lot in 20 years. When I started, markets had quite a masculine energy to them. People forget how physical the work is, moving heavy crates and working in all weathers – it’s not for the faint hearted. There weren’t many women running stalls back then, and I had to work quite hard for my voice to be heard, but I feel like my presence as a small female producer is as valued as any of the men. It was a slog at times, particularly with a little baby, but I’ve had nothing but support and encouragement along the way.

You still spend a lot of time at the market, as well as making the product yourself. What keeps bringing you back here when you could be taking it easy somewhere warm instead?

Partly it’s the other traders. I’m quite community minded, always have been. I like to know my neighbours and I like to interact with them. I love meeting other people who are as involved with their products as I am, people who really care – you can share that passion, but also you can trade off each other’s knowledge. It’s also important to be constantly learning about your customers. If I wasn’t on my stall, and I was just cashing in the money, I’d miss all of that. I’ve become such good friends with so many of customers over the years. People write me the most incredible emails as well. I’ve got hundreds of them, written to me out of the blue. I think they can taste the care that goes into the pâté. They recognise that I’m not a faceless brand – it is all me doing it.

IWD

“JAMÓN IBÉRICO IS THE BEST HAM IN THE WORLD. I’M VERY HAPPY THAT SPANISH PEOPLE INVENTED THIS FOR US!”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Portraits: Orlando Gili

As a first question posed to a young woman with a Spanish name whose job on a Spanish food stand (Brindisa) involves a definitively Spanish craft – hand-carving jamón Ibérico – it seems reasonable enough: which part of Spain are you from? “I’m not from Spain, I’m from Colombia,” replies Manuela Villegas Restrepo. “From Medellín in Colombia.” At Borough Market, nothing should ever be assumed.

Until she landed in London six years ago in search of new opportunities, Manuela had only visited Europe once before. “My sister-in-law is Spanish, so I’d been in Spain for my brother’s wedding in 2015, but only for a month, just holidays, not to live.” She knew nothing of Spanish ham. She also spoke no English: “I just knew that ‘manzana’ is apple. That’s all!” She is now an impressively fluent speaker and a skilled proponent of the delicate art of carving cured meat, her rapid mastery of which she attributes in part to her background as a musician. “I’ve played the violin since I was seven years old,” she says, with an elegant flourish of her arm. “It’s quite similar in some ways – my knife is like my bow!”

Before you came to Europe, had you ever come across jamón Ibérico?

Literally never. For me, it was really weird to see it, because it’s just a massive leg. For a Colombian it’s quite shocking. It’s like: “What is this?” At first, I thought it was raw! But when I started to learn, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with Spanish gastronomy, how they cook, how simple the food is. I love food and I love the stories behind food. How people cook is what makes a culture. To understand a country, you have to understand its food. We speak Spanish in Latin America but the resources are different and the way we cook is completely different.

So how on earth did you end up learning the traditional Spanish craft of the ‘cortadora de jamón’?

When I met with my brother here in London, he found me a job as a ham carver for a company called Enrique Tomás. He works there as a manager. Enrique Tomás is really famous across the world. It’s this guy, his name is Enrique, and he does everything – he has the pigs and produces the ham. When I started to work there, I didn’t like it. You need to have a high level of skill to carve properly and I found it very hard, especially with my lack of English. But I started to read about it, started to familiarise myself with the process, and slowly I got better. I remember they gave me the cheap ham to train on – the serrano ham. Once I got better, I started to go to the higher categories.

The jamón Ibérico you’re now carving at Brindisa is the very highest category of all. What makes it so special?

Creating it is just a long, beautiful process. The carvers are like the top of the tree, making a beautiful plate, but the roots are so deep. It all starts with the pig. It’s a special and unique pig, an Ibérico pig, which can only be found in Spain and Portugal. They’re free range and they have a special diet of acorns. When you see the pigs, they’re huge. They’re semi-wild animals, very impressive. The pig lives for maybe two and half years, and then the process of curing is another three years minimum, so it takes a lot of time and work before I’m here carving a leg.

How much variation is there in the flavours and textures within a leg of jamón?

There are lots of different muscles in a pig’s leg and every muscle is different, so the same leg has lots of different flavours. Every leg is different as well: the pigs are free range, so some of them walk more, some of them walk less. We have ham from four different regions, and from every region the ham tastes different. It’s the same type of pig and the same curing process, but the environment is different. We have one farm that is really close to the sea, and you can taste the salty wind in the ham.

What does the perfect slice of jamón Ibérico look like?

My Spanish colleague Eva is a beautiful and special ham carver. Because I’m not from Spain, I’ve been learning so much from her. Her parents told her that the perfect slice will be the size of a credit card and really thin. It’s the perfect size to put in your mouth. It melts on your tongue. It’s like an experience – not just to eat, to enjoy. Because we carve by hand, every piece is unique, and it’s artisanal from the very beginning until the very end. It’s the best ham in the world. I’m very happy that Spanish people invented this for us!

In Spain, yours is a highly respected profession, but also a very male one. You won’t often see a woman carving ham, but at Brindisa there are two female carvers in the same shop. Does it feel good, breaking down those barriers?

Yes, I feel fantastic – because I’m as woman and as well because I’m Colombian. Some Spanish people do get a bit offended. They arrive in the shop and ask: “Whereabouts in Spain are you from?” I say I’m from Colombia and some of them are like: “What? Do you have a license to do this?” No, but I do it, and I do it well and really that’s all that matters. I suppose for them it’s very cultural, very important. And a non-Spanish woman carving ham? That’s just weird!

Brindisa is a company founded by a woman. Do you enjoy working for her?

I love it. Monika, the owner, has made it her mission to work closely with small businesses in Spain, and basically just help them grow, and grow together with them. I really like that philosophy. She’s really inspiring and really humble as well. I love the company, not just for the ham but for every product that we have. Every product we sell is truly artisanal.

There’s an element of performance to your work. How do you find it, being on public display?

Every day I feel like I’m famous! Literally every minute, people are taking pictures. Sometimes it’s fun, depending on your mood. But sometimes, if I’m having a really bad day, it’s quite annoying, so I pull my face really crazy! I’m always happy to talk to people, though. They get really interested in what I’m doing and about the ham, asking lots of questions.

Do you enjoy being in the market every day?

Yes, I love working in a market. The aromas and the colours and the noise – it’s really magic. And you make those connections with so many different people. It’s like living in a big house. The only thing is the weather. The weather is awful. As a Colombian, it’s really challenging! In the corner where Brindisa is, we receive currents of wind from every single direction. And the floor as well: the cold comes up through your feet when you’re standing there for eight hours! But then the summer comes and it’s warm, and when you finish work it’s still light. Then it’s really beautiful.

IWD

“REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE COMMODITY MARKET IS DOING, ONCE WE’VE SET A PRICE, IT NEVER GOES DOWN”

Words: Tomé Morrissy-Swan

Britons are drinking more coffee than ever. The number of coffee shops more than doubled between 2007 and 2018 and continues to rise, with cafes set to overtake pubs by 2030. Whether brewed at home or bought from a specialty coffee shop, for millions of us, no day goes by without a cup.

But, like most global commodities, coffee faces several threats. Climate change is threatening harvests with droughts and floods. In Brazil, the world’s largest producer, a late frost in 2021 severely damaged yields, pushing prices up around the world. Recent weather-related shortages have seen prices soar to a near 50-year high. On the social side, producers often see meagre financial returns.

But many coffee companies in the UK are striving to do things better, whether buying sustainably grown coffee and paying farmers a premium or using coffee as a way of effecting social change in Britain. Here, two Borough Market-based coffee shops explain their approach to serving coffee with a conscience.

Monmouth Coffee Company

Environmentally speaking, coffee is a high-impact product – and a luxury at that. It is grown in large quantities, heavily processed, transported around the globe, packaged (possibly several times), and requires the boiling of water for each cup. “If you look at the carbon footprint of beef and cheese, coffee’s not far below that,” says Finn Andres, Monmouth Coffee Company’s sustainability lead.

Monmouth has been selling coffee since 1978. From working with small farms ideally using environmentally friendly methods, to using renewable energy at its cafes, it tries to do things the right way, says Finn.

Monmouth’s core principles are quality, transparency and being socially sustainable. The coffee must be of a high calibre; they must know where it has come from; and they strive to “pay farmers properly”.

That begins with working closely with producers. As a commodity, the coffee market is volatile, and growers are often paid poorly. Monmouth has long used a direct trade model, establishing close relationships with farmers, mostly in Latin America or Africa, and making long-term price commitments. “They can be sure that, regardless of what the commodity market is doing, next year they have this price, normally well above the commodity price,” Finn explains. “Once we’ve set a price, it never goes down.”

Transport is the next hurdle. Monmouth’s coffee arrives via container ship which, though using diesel, is “by far the lowest-impact way”, short of sailing ships. In the UK, Monmouth exclusively uses electric vehicles and its premises are run on renewable energy where possible – the roasters, currently, are gas-powered. Milk is purchased from a Somerset farm with “very low impact for dairy – but it’s still dairy,” says Finn.

Packaging is Finn’s biggest bugbear, and the hardest thing to get right. Coffee requires a barrier to protect it from the elements; it would spoil quickly in a paper bag. Monmouth’s packaging is not currently recyclable. “Our packaging needs to change, it can definitely be improved,” Finn admits.

Arguably the business’s biggest recent change has been doing away with disposable cups. Around 2.5 billion are used each year in the UK, with millions thrown away – very few are recycled – each day. Since 2022, customers have had to bring their own, drink in, or pay a £5 deposit for a reusable cup, which can be swapped for another on their next visit. It has gone down “surprisingly well”, says Andres, and has barely impacted sales. “In terms of how quickly customer behaviour changed, it was really fast.” Several cafes have been in touch for Monmouth’s help in following suit. It shows how small changes can soon make a big change.

Change Please

It all started in 2015 with a coffee cart in Covent Garden. Founder Cemal Ezel had been away travelling and, on returning to London, was struck by the levels of homelessness he saw. According to Crisis, the number of people sleeping rough in the UK in 2023 was 120 percent up on 2010. Change Please is fighting it.

The social enterprise trains people experiencing homelessness to Speciality Coffee Association standards, with a dedicated academy in Peckham and 10 retail sites across London. It has helped hundreds earn the skills to enter employment.

Candidates are referred to Change Please by bodies including the NHS or charities. They undertake a 12-week programme including barista training at one of the London cafes – including Borough Market. Trainees are paid the London Living Wage and given support with everything from mental health to housing. All profits go towards funding the programme.

The social enterprise also runs the Driving to Change initiative. A repurposed double decker bus visits London boroughs, working alongside councils to provide support, from dental care and banking assistance to a coffee and a chat. Last year it made 4,000 trips, provided 1,091 haircuts, 878 dental visits and gave out 84 mobile phones. It also refers candidates to the barista training scheme. “It’s a vital service that goes out every day of the week,” says Tara Cunningham, Change Please’s head of marketing.

For Tara, coffee is an especially good medium for training. “Anyone can be taught it, you don’t need any prior experience,” she explains. “It teaches many other skills. As well as barista skills, it’s very interactive – you’re speaking to people, dealing with the public, working with the team.”

In 2024, 231 people went through the barista programme, 54 moving on to full-time employment. While many work as baristas, others have moved into other roles, including in IT. Tara believes a lot more can be done on a national level to tackle homelessness, but “we think that empowering people to get back into employment is the right way to do it”.

“IT IS APPARENT TO ALL OF US WHO ARE LOVERS OF FOOD THAT THE GREATEST PLEASURES ARE EMBEDDED IN THE ACT OF SHARING”

Words: Marie Mitchell / Images: RED Agency, Sophia Spring

The loom of Valentine’s Day often fills me with dread. Not for the fact that it’s a day to celebrate love – I’m drawn to that like a moth to a flame – but because of the pressure placed on romantic couples to showcase their love in the most fleeting of ways, as if this were the only day to do so. Love bound in respect, appreciation and community is the kind I root for; love that builds memories and lasts a lifetime.

Usman Shah of Date Sultan believes in “love at first bite”, with his first being that of a date – a custom in his household and a wider Islamic one, where a baby’s first taste should be of something sweet. Clearly that bite did last a lifetime, as Usman is now the proud owner of Date Sultan, a social enterprise at Borough Market that imports dates from Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.

His parents used to send Usman out to gift dates to passers-by, believing that the more you gifted others, the more that kindness would make its way back to you. This sentiment now provides the framework of his business. Usman works directly with farmers to tackle modern slavery, a practice deeply entrenched in date farming (and many other forms of agriculture around the world). Having grown up in Newham, east London, Usman also uses his business to give those closer to home job opportunities, seeking to employ local people who’ve previously struggled to gain work. The trickle-down effect of trust and appreciation from consumer to producer has helped Usman build a community in which everyone benefits.

Friends, family and community is what motivates me in my work – and it’s also what has helped Salina Khairunnisa’s Malaysian food business, Joli, go from strength to strength. In 2009, after being made redundant during the worst global recession in almost a century, Salina (pictured top) turned to food to support her family. A charity event selling the garlic and chilli oils she made at home, led to her selling them through her children’s music school. Later, after sending her products to the Guild of Fine Food, she had her first taste of market life.

While Salina worked other jobs to provide for her children, it was the generosity of her friends and neighbours, for birthdays and Christmas’, that helped her gather the tools and equipment she needed to slowly build the business. A couple at Dulwich farmers’ market gifted her their tables, weights and canopy, as it was their last day of trading. This allowed her to expand to a second stall, building on the success of the first, leading to an invitation to cook and trade at Borough Market for the 2012 Olympics.

Salina chose to cook Malaysian food – the food of home – for the simple reason that she missed it. When she first moved to London, she relied on her family to send letters with recipes so she could learn how to cook the food herself, and waited for their yearly visits, when they’d bring spices and other ingredients with them. All of this is embedded in the evolution of Joli, with both family and friends being integral to its story. Salina still has those letters sent by her mother and grandmother: these beautiful, tangible pieces of cross-generational learning, love and support.

It is apparent to all of us who are lovers of food that the greatest pleasures are embedded in the act of sharing. How else do those moments of taste become traditions? How else do the seasonal shifts and what we make of them become celebrations? My love for the Island of Grenada is felt deeply within my own work and it’s where the products found on the De La Grenade stand are made. They are imported by Doreen Gittens, who upon tasting the products some 15 or so years ago immediately wanted to support their maker, Sybil La Grenade, by bringing them to England.

Doreen wanted to showcase the products of De La Grenade not only because they were good but because they were steeped in family history – a business being run by a black woman who was doing it on her own, while also bringing up a family and working another job. The spice isle, as Grenada is known, is a treasure trove of spices, and the De La Grenade products are packed with these treasures. On seeing my first ever nutmeg in the flesh and learning from Doreen how the jams, jellies and syrup are in fact made from the fruit, not the seed we’re used to seeing in spice jars, I immediately felt a yearning for Caribbean flavours. Guava jam is one of the comforting, homely flavours that place me in the first kitchen I knew in all its intricacies. There are water crackers, and mum is spreading the guava jam on them for us as a snack. That is love. That moment, all those moments, are forever in mind.

The love of food – and the love of sharing food – extends far beyond any single day. But Valentine’s Day, if we let it, might be an opportunity to think about the people who grow, pick, transport, cook, package and sell our food. To recognise the love and dedication they pour into delivering it to us, and how we might in turn share that love with our favourite people.

“EACH MORNING, OUR PRODUCERS CHOOSE THE VERY BEST FISH – THE ONES WITH FIRM FLESH, BRIGHT EYES, BRIGHT RED GILLS”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Images: Patricia Niven

In 2018, when Stephen Lucas was approached by his friend Patrick Martinez with a business idea, his initial response was one of mild scepticism. “Patrick had rented a space in a market in Liverpool, where we lived, and we were discussing what to sell there. Being from Spain, he knew about tinned fish so knew it could be a gourmet product. Whereas I did not. I was like: ‘Tinned fish? Really?’”

A mouthful or two was all it took to turn Stephen’s world upside down. “As soon I tried the Pinhais spicy sardines, I completely changed my tune.” The Tinned Fish Market, which started on Merseyside with two suitcases of cans flown back from the Iberian Peninsula, is now headquartered in Bermondsey, the historic home of the British canning industry. Its beautiful Borough Market stand, run by Stephen, has become a magnet for lovers of tinned fish – and for other mild sceptics willing to be converted.

Tins from Spain and Portugal feature heavily, handmade in small batches using seasonal fish from the Algarve, the Azores and the Cantabrian Sea, but these have since been joined by products of a similarly stellar quality sourced from around Europe. The big-hitters of the tinned fish world – anchovies, sardines, tuna – are all available in a wide range of styles and flavours, alongside cans with contents of a more niche character, from Galician garfish and goose barnacles to Icelandic monkfish livers and Cornish squid.

In the UK, tinned fish doesn’t have the best of reputations. Why is that?

Most people here are only familiar with mass-produced tinned fish. You’ll find mass-produced stuff in Portugal and Spain too, but those countries also have this thriving culture of high-quality tinned fish. Our job is to explain what makes these products special, and why they cost more than those 60p supermarket tins. Each morning, our producers are choosing the very best fish – the ones with firm flesh, bright eyes, bright red gills, all those important markers. Over here, canning has tended to be a way of using up the fish that don’t meet those benchmarks.

Beyond preservation, what are the benefits of canning good fish?

There’s no clock ticking with tinned fish, so you can eat it whenever you want, but it’s much more than that. It’s about the flavours. Like wine, they really do get better with time, becoming richer and more complex. At Pinhais, a cannery in Portugal, they mature their sardines for six months before they’re even released. They’ll continue to improve in your cupboard. You just need to make sure you turn the cans from time to time so that the fish are regularly coated in oil.

How old are the canneries you work with?

The oldest has been around since 1857. Quite a few have been around for at least 100 years. Salvatore Orlando of Olasagasti was one of the pioneers – he came to Spain from Sicily in the late 19th century, bringing with him a salting technique that worked perfectly with the amazing anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea. There are new canneries as well, particularly in the Algarve. Papa Anzóis is one. They told me that the last thing Portugal needs is more sardines in olive oil, so they’ve done something new: they’re dehydrating the fish first, which means they absorb more oil and become even juicier. They still use some of those 100-year-old techniques, but they’re melding them with new ideas.

You source from canneries all over Europe. What characteristic do they have in common?

They only use high-quality ingredients – the fish, but also the oil and flavourings – and they still work by hand. There came a point in history when it became much cheaper to mechanise everything, but these canneries have stubbornly kept to the artisanal techniques. You see them in the factories beheading and gutting the fish in a single movement – it’s so fast, it looks like sleight of hand. The fish are also placed in the tins by hand. They can cut them in a way that minimises waste, and it looks so beautiful when you open the tins, all carefully arranged.

Are we starting to see a revival of artisanal canning in Britain?

We are. One nice story is Hevva! – a new Cornish cannery. When they were getting started, they came to us asking for tips on what would do well in the British market, and we gave them some advice on their products and packaging. Theirs are now some of the most popular cans on our stand. And some of the most luxurious tins that we have are from Exmoor Caviar in Devon – so yes, it’s definitely happening here now.

What are your suppliers doing to protect the oceans?

Our canneries work at a small scale using sustainable fishing practices such as pole-and-line fishing and ‘purse seine’, a type of net that allows smaller fish to escape. They fish seasonally to avoid overfishing. Tinned fish is like a little time capsule – you can eat seasonally all year round. The albacore tuna is only fished for four months over the summer. Anchovies are caught in the spring. Striped red mullet is caught for a single month in late summer. Sardines are fished from May to November, and if the quota’s met before that November cut-off, then the boats have to stop. It’s all entirely traceable: we get a catch certificate which says where they’re caught, which boat caught them, the weight of the catch. If somebody wanted to know where the contents of a can came from and when, we’d be able to find that out – every single can.

One thing that’s immediately obvious to anyone visiting your stand is the quality of the graphic art on the cans. How big a draw is that?

It’s funny the number of people who stop by for that reason. We get graphic designers dropping by just to look at the tins. We even get vegans coming in to appreciate the art! Some of the artwork has real heritage – the Berthe design, with the little girl, that’s from 1906. Others are modern – the amazing Papa Anzóis branding, for example, with its bright pops of colour. Those designs draw people in. Their look is what’s so arresting when you pass our stand, and maybe what persuades people to buy them initially. After that, though, it’s more about the flavour and less about the aesthetics.

How close is your relationship with the canneries you buy from?

A lot of them have been on a real journey with us over the past six years and we’ve got to know them really well. Pinhais has been with us right from the start. We’ve been with Olasagasti a long time. Don Reinaldo, too – they’re just five people working in a tiny cannery in Galicia. I remember when some of their tins were featured on the Sorted Food channel on YouTube. Their videos have huge reach in the UK, and suddenly everyone here knew about this tiny Spanish cannery. People were flooding to our store wanting monkfish livers. The cannery had to do a whole extra batch just for us because it was so popular! They were so excited. It was lovely to see.