“FROM WORKING HERE, I KNOW HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO BE AWARE OF THE SEASONS AND ACTIVELY BUY THINGS AT THEIR BEST”

Behind the scenes at Borough is a small team of dedicated professionals whose job it is to keep the wheels of this historic market turning. Most of them are completely obsessed with food, thanks in part to their daily exposure to exceptional produce and expert traders. We’ve asked them to share their thoughts on the ingredients and dishes that spark their excitement when summer rolls around.   

Bethan Davies is Borough Market’s Head of Comms & Marketing, responsible for the many ways the market communicates with its customers, traders and the wider public.

What’s the item of summer produce you most look forward to?

Tomatoes. When they’re at their most fragrant and delectable, they’re my favourite thing to eat, often just with a generous sprinkle of salt. I like the unpredictability of British fruit and veg and how it challenges me to think about what to cook. Working for the market, I know it’s incredibly difficult for our traders to predict when certain seasonal produce will be in stock, but that makes it even more important to be aware of the seasons and the weather and actively buy things at their best.

What’s the most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten on a summer holiday. Where was it and what was it?

In 2012, my friend Sam and I had been staying in a cheap all-inclusive in Tenerife, where we ate buffet meals all week. We decided to treat ourselves to a dinner out on the last night. We picked a traditional restaurant, where we ordered Canarian potatoes – new potatoes, cooked in salted water to the point of evaporation, which leaves this amazing crust, served with red and green mojo. We also had the most delicious, perfectly seasoned, rare steak. After a week of bland food, the flavours were magnified, and our tastebuds were in shock! I spent months trying to recreate that green mojo and I often cook my potatoes with this method even now.

It’s a perfect barbecue day. Are you the one firing up the barbecue or part of the crowd sitting with a cold drink while someone else sweats over the coals?

I’m the sides queen in my family. I always do a really simple new potato salad with avocado, lemon and cress for gatherings, and you’ll find my beloved tomatoes in there too, layered with fresh cheese and herbs. I’m lucky to have some amazing cooks in my life, so more often than not I’ll let them do incredible dishes cooked over fire and I’ll happily provide the drinks! My special is a salted watermelon margarita – refreshing and perfect to make in a pitcher for ease.

What’s your ultimate barbecue dish?

I don’t think you can beat a perfectly cooked steak. A generously sized cheaper cut like bavette served rare and sliced crossways (not with the grain – that makes it chewy!) before being doused in a herby, tangy sauce is my idea of heaven. I also really love grilled pineapple sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar – a simple, delicious summer dessert.

If you were planning your ideal picnic, what foods from Borough Market would you add to your basket? 

I’d create the perfect sandwich: a fresh ciabatta big enough to hold layers of Italian ham, mozzarella, some sort of chargrilled or pickled veg, a handful of rocket and a generous layer of mustard mayo. Squished, wrapped in paper and sliced for easy munching – the dream.

Where in London would you take your Borough Market picnic basket for an afternoon in the sun?

I love the Southbank. I used to visit a lot as a kid and I’ve always enjoyed the buzz and proximity to all the plays and exhibitions. The Queen Elizabeth Hall rooftop garden is a great spot for a picnic – it’s free, has amazing views and is perfect to sit and enjoy the sunshine before maybe making an impromptu decision to see something at the theatre.

What’s your summer sundown tipple of choice? In an ideal world, where would you be sitting to enjoy it?

My ultimate summer drink is cider. I’ve gone on a long journey of discovery since my teenage ‘cider and black’ era and now really enjoy the wide range of styles available, particularly at Borough Market. The spectrum of flavours and methods means I never get bored of trying different ciders. But each time, that initial sip makes me think of long, lazy summer days, fun times with friends and inevitably some questionable decisions. Ah, life experience! And if I could be anywhere, it’d be in Hout Bay in Cape Town, where they do sundowners better than anywhere else I’ve been.

“BANANA LEAVES ADD A UNIQUE HERBACEOUS SCENT TO THEIR CONTENTS WHILE PREVENT THE CONTENTS FROM DRYING OUT”

Words: Andy Oliver / Images: Anton Rodriguez

1. Choose the right cuts

One of the best ways to get the most out of ingredients on the grill is through slow and steady cooking, using specific cuts. Fish or meat on the bone work particularly well. Cuts with a bit of fat, such as pork neck or chicken with the skin still on, will bring great flavour and good texture when cooked slowly and steadily, as the fat melts and the meat slowly browns.

2. Manage the heat

Careful heat management is also needed to achieve this effect. Damping the coals with a smoke mix – and using hooks, baskets or simple racks instead of heavy, heat-conducting bars – will help keep your grilling under control. It’s also important to maintain an appropriate distance between your ingredients and the heat source, as this ensures the meat is evenly cooked through. This traditional Thai approach to grilling requires patience, but it helps to achieve perfectly grilled dishes.

3. Make use of your oven

Combining your kitchen oven with your barbecue grill is a very useful technique if you have lots of guests to entertain or if your barbecue isn’t big enough for everything. Baking ingredients in the oven before finishing them on the grill allows you to cook your food gently and steadily without the stress of juggling time and space. Starting some sausages or boneless chicken thighs for 15 minutes in a 120C oven before finishing them on the grill can really cut the cooking time down without losing flavour. Even roasting bigger pieces of meat like a butterflied leg of lamb in an oven at 150C until it’s partway cooked can be great, as can baking spiced squash or cauliflower in a 200C oven before a final char on the barbecue.

4. Add curry sauces to grilled ingredients – and vice versa

Try marinating ingredients in curry-like sauces before placing them on the grill. At Kolae, which is named after a traditional southern Thai dish, we utilise curry pastes made from dried red chillies, shallots, ginger and lemongrass, plus spices like coriander and cumin or cassia, cooked with coconut cream and seasonings. For an even deeper and more complex flavour, grill specific elements and then add them into curries. Grilled beef can be sliced and folded into a spicy jungle curry, adding a rich, smoky taste.

5. Create banana leaf wraps

A great way to elevate the flavour of grilled meats, herbs or fish on the barbecue is to wrap them in banana leaves. When cooked, the banana leaves add a unique herbaceous scent to their contents, and they also prevent the contents from drying out. You can even grill certain styles of curry in banana leaves – try a rich red curry of monkfish and Thai basil, or northeastern Thai curry of grilled chicken, pea aubergines and herbs. They can also be used to create a dessert of sticky rice and sweet coconut cream.

6. Embrace the char

Utilising the grill for blackening certain ingredients before peeling them can really boost the flavour. Charring long aubergines, shell-on prawns, shallots or chilies adds a smoky, complex depth to their taste – an easy way to transform simple ingredients.

7. Serve a Thai salad on the side

Accompanying your barbecued dishes with a refreshing, spicy Thai salad is ideal for warm, summer days. The fresh ingredients of the salad really cut through the rich smokiness of the grilled meats and vegetables, elevating the meal and bringing a real vibrancy. Try a pounded salad of green papaya, shrimp, peanuts and tomatoes; a sour green mango salad with deep-fried fish and cashew nuts; an Ajaad relish-style salad of cucumber, ginger and chilli; or a pomelo salad with roasted coconut, chilli jam and poached prawns.

“HERE, YOU CAN EXPLORE THE BREADTH OF ITALIAN REGIONAL CUISINE WITHOUT HAVING TO BUY A PLANE TICKET”

Words: Giulia Crouch

Italian cuisine is famously regional – fiercely so. Ask a chef in the south to create a dish of the north and it’s likely they’ll turn up their nose and launch into a speech about the real taste of Italy (the food of their region, obviously). If you’re eating in Italy, selecting a dish from the local area rather than one from another part of the country is always a wise choice for your tastebuds.

I saw this firsthand last summer when one of my relatives, Maria, a southern Italian, attempted to make carbonara, a dish from Rome, a city in central Italy. I had never known her make anything that didn’t taste good, but this carbonara, which was oddly slimy and really quite bland, was one of the worst I’ve ever tasted. But then Maria didn’t grow up eating the dish or learning how to make it. It’s simply not in her blood. Instead, her jam – and that of her fellow southerners – is tomato-rich dishes such as caprese salad, spaghetti with tomato sauce and the unbeatable Margherita pizza.

Head north, to Emilia-Romagna, and you’ll find different flavours: rich, meaty ragù, tortellini in comforting broth, and many more rice dishes than you’d see down south. The same distinct regionality isn’t just true for recipes but also for single products which in some cases can be traced back to specific cities. Within Emilia-Romagna, balsamic vinegar hails from Modena and prosciutto di Parma is from – you guessed it – Parma.

A major reason for this is the diversity of the country’s geography and climate, with its long coastlines and mountain ranges, and a distinctive shape which results in the southern regions being closer to north Africa than they are to France. But history also plays its part. “You have to remember that Italy has only been a unified country for a little over 150 years,” says Mark Riddaway, author of Borough Market: Edible Histories. “Before that it was made up of lots of independent city states, each with its own history of trade, migration and conquest and its own distinctive culture. I think that helps explain why regional identity still runs so deep. And because food is so central to Italian society, it’s through food that these historic identities are often asserted.” 

This comes through clearly in the zeal with which each town, city or region will promote its signature fare. Recently, on a trip to Bologna, I witnessed a mortadella producer pick up a 2.3kg sausage, hold it in his arms like a baby, and beam as he invited people to take pictures of him with his pride and joy.

In Borough Market you can explore the breadth of Italian regional cuisine without ever having to buy a plane ticket. There are seven Italian food stalls here, all offering very different products. One of the most striking to me is Alpine Deli. Owner Thea Wunderer sells the products of her home region, South Tyrol, which, bordering Slovenia, Austria and Switzerland, is as far north in Italy as you can go. The food is influenced by its mountainous terrain and, to many people, appears more German or Austrian than Italian – though really it’s its own thing: Alpine.

Specialities include venison prosciutto, which is air-dried and lightly smoked – a key characteristic in the food of South Tyrol. Thea has a whole range of smoked charcuterie available including smoked sausages, smoked speck and Alpine bresaola made with silverside of beef. The speck is normally sliced very thinly or put inside traditional bread dumplings known as knödel or canederli.

The meaty, hearty food of South Tyrol could hardly be more different from the sun-soaked, vegetable-rich cuisine of the south. Wander two minutes from Thea’s stall to another called De Calabria, where you can enjoy the wonderful produce of Calabria, and you’ll be journeying from the top to the ‘toe’ of Italy – the southernmost part of the country.

Giuseppe Mele, who established the business in 2005, likes to celebrate the varied terrain of his home region and the wealth of different produce that comes from it. “The food of Calabria is influenced by the many microclimates of the region,” he says. “There are mountains and valleys and coastlines, so it brings with it a lot of diversity.” One year, when the olive harvest in Italy was generally poor, brilliant oil could still be produced in Calabria thanks to the highly specific conditions of one part of the region.

At the stall you can find examples of fantastic Calabrian extra virgin olive oil, honey, cheese and an array of chilli products. Calabrians certainly like their spice, as is clear from their love of nduja, a spreadable salami made from pig’s cheeks, belly and lard. Rendered a vibrant, deep red from a healthy dose of Calabrian chilli peppers, it’s one of the most popular items on the stall. “Thirty years ago, nduja was only known in a little area nearby where I’m from,” says Giuseppe. “Now, and in the last 15 years, it’s exploded and is known all over the world.”

Sun-dried tomatoes are also key to the cuisine and Giuseppe’s, which he finely chops and puts in oil with dried chilli, fennel seeds and dried oregano, are extra special. I have a jar in my fridge and I use them on everything.

Around the corner from De Calabria, you’ll also find the proud produce of Emilia-Romagna on offer in Borough Market. Ewa Weremij, who owns Bianca Mora, is passionate about both the food of the region and the regionality of Italian cuisine in general. “It’s so important because southern Italy is so different from northern Italy and central Italy is different again. The south is sunny and dry, so prosciutto di Parma or parmesan cheese could never be made there because there’s not enough humidity. Instead, you get olives, olive oil and citrus fruits.”

Ewa says that even within one region the food can have its own local distinctions. “Emilia-Romagna used to be two regions, Emilia and Romagna, and while it’s one today the cuisine is still different between the two parts.” In other words, Italian cuisine is not just regional, it’s hyper-regional. In fact, it will even differ from house to house. One auntie will make the local pasta dish like this, the other will make it like that, but both will claim theirs is “the correct way”.

Ewa, like all of the Market’s Italian food importers, is keen to champion not just the produce but the producers, and often sources from family businesses that make their wares using traditional methods and native breeds. One of her stand’s most popular products, ‘red cow’ parmesan is produced from the milk of Vacche Rosse cows, an ancient breed unique to the region. This, she says, creates a cheese unlike those made with milk from Friesians. Not just that but this parmesan can differ depending on the season: summer milk tastes different from winter milk, and the environment in which the cows are kept can also affect the flavour and intensity – those in the mountains eat more herbs and produce a stronger-tasting cheese. “Parmesan is not just parmesan,” she explains.

Bianca Mora also sells other classics, including a very special 100-year-old balsamic vinegar from Modena and prosciutto di Parma, one of Emilia-Romagna’s most famous exports. “When I first visited Borough Market in 2009, I knew this was a place that I could bring people a true taste of Emilia-Romagna,” says Ewa. In fact, your tastebuds can tour Italy’s many regions – all in this small patch of central London.

“THIS IS ALL ABOUT DELICIOUS FOOD THAT CAN BE MUNCHED WITH MINIMAL FORETHOUGHT IN A NEARBY GREEN SPACE”

Picnics come in two forms. There’s the idealised kind, complete with lovingly made salads and home-baked tarts, transported in wicker baskets and served on tartan rugs with proper cutlery and perfectly chilled wine. And then there’s the more realistic prospect: the slightly giddy, spur-of-the-moment exploitation of a sun-kissed lunchtime. This is all about the latter – a sweep of Borough Market for delicious food that can be munched with minimal forethought, followed by a dash to a nearby green space to graze in the dappled shade of a tree.

So, what should you look for and where should you take it?

Pies

There are few things better suited to an impromptu picnic than a pie, and Borough is packed with them. At Mrs Kings Pork Pies, you’ll find handmade Melton Mowbray pork pies made with proper hot-water-crust pastry, plus similarly stellar scotch eggs. There are superior sausage rolls at Northfield Farm and Ginger Pig, made from beautifully flavoursome outdoor-bred pork. Porteña offers a wide range of excellent empanadas – essentially an Argentinean pasty – while Artisan Foods is famed for its quiches, which include meat-free options such as spinach and feta or broccoli, stilton and walnut.

Cured meats

Another obvious must, and another Borough asset. There are French saucissons, rillettes and smoked or air-dried hams at The French Comte, Une Normande a Londres and Le Marché du Quartier. You’ll find hand-carved Spanish jamón at Brindisa. Most comprehensive of all is the Borough’s treasure trove of regional Italian cured meats, including salami sticks from the cool Tyrol mountains in the far north (Alpine Deli), soppressata from the heat of Calabria in the deep south (De Calabria), and the world-famous hams from the pig-packed landscape of Emilia-Romagna (Bianca Mora).

Fish

Slightly less obvious for a picnic, but far from unviable. Some of the smoked fish at Oak & Smoke, produced in Scotland using centuries-old methods, is ready to eat straight from the packet, while the tinned mussels from The Tinned Fish Market are among the most finger-friendly of the stall’s impressive array of high-quality canned seafood – no tin opener required!

Cheeses

Borough Market cheese is beautiful, abundant, but potentially problematic. Most soft cheeses are only good if you’ve had the foresight to bring a knife (or if you’re buying Blackwoods Cheese Company’s Graceburn or Jumi Cheese’s Formaggini cheese pots, both of which are bite-sized and conveniently jarred). Otherwise, go for one of the Market’s mind-boggling array of hard cheeses and ask the cheesemonger to cut them up for you: one of the beauties of being served by a real person.

Breads

In the likely absence of a bread knife, you’ll need the kind of bread you can tear at with your hands: perhaps the sourdough baguettes from The Flour Station, slow-fermented ciabatta baps from Olivier’s Bakery, or challah rolls from Moishe’s Bagelry & Bakery – soft, fluffy and easy to break apart. Other good options for dipping or topping are the crackers from The Cinnamon Tree Bakery, all of them handmade in Camberwell, which include seeded flatbreads and rye and caraway flatbreads.

Antipasti & dips

Borough Olives has marinated olives from Europe and north Africa, with varieties including the Greek Volos, Italian nocellara and Spanish Aragón, as well as antipasti such as sundried tomatoes, marinated peppers and pickled garlic, and some amazingly meaty tapenade made from Greek Halkidiki olives. Also sourced from Greece – specifically Sparta – Oliveology’s olives are typically exceptional, and the same stand sells tzatziki and a Greek fava dip, both made in small batches in Bermondsey. Food & Forest’s roasted, salted, organic guara almonds sourced from farmers in Andalucia, Spain, are another must, as is the gorgeously umami mushroom pâté from Pâté Moi, which inspires cult-like devotion – for good reasons. 

Sweets

To finish, treat yourself to some summer berries from Stark’s Fruiterers, with the size and sweetness of this year’s English strawberries expected to offer some small compensation for the cold, wet spring that lengthened their growing time. Other good-to-share sweets that require no slicing include the delicate macarons from Comptoir Gourmand and the vast array of traditionally made Turkish delight available at The Turkish Deli.

Drinks

Two requirements here: cold and refreshing. A couple of standout options are Raya’s cold-pressed sugarcane juice, flavoured with lime and ginger, and bottles of Effervé Citron from The French Comte – a classic sparkling lemonade produced in Alsace. And if your spontaneous picnic is on a day when some gentle alcohol consumption is viable, try The London Cider House’s cider slush.

Where to take your picnic

Despite its urban location, the Market has plenty of attractive green space with a few minutes’ walk. Red Cross Garden, a beautiful hidden garden off Redcross Way, offers a pond, a rose arbour and some rich history – it was opened in 1888 as part of a social housing project run by Octavia Hill, the great 19^th century reformer and one of the founders of The National Trust. Like Red Cross Garden, the much larger Mint Street Park on Marshalsea Road is beautifully maintained by volunteers from Bankside Open Spaces Trust, a local environmental charity. Over towards Bermondsey, Leathermarket Gardens on Weston Street is attractively landscaped. For impressive views, Tate Modern Gardens offers the twin attractions of St Paul’s Cathedral and the world-famous art gallery, while Potters Field Park enjoys the looming presence of Tower Bridge.

Head to our Instagram to enjoy reels of the Market’s picnic food, as well as some of the nearby green spaces.

“OUR PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW HOW MANY HOURS THEY’RE GOING TO WORK, AND WHEN THEY’RE GOING TO WORK THEM”

It was all the way back in 2016 that Borough Market first became an accredited Living Wage Employer. For the past eight years, we’ve been committed to paying every member of our team more than the hourly wage set each year by the Living Wage Foundation – a charitable organisation that helps employers set a level of pay that meets their people’s essential needs. Rates are updated each year to cover the cost not just of paying rent and buying food but of living a happy and fulfilling life, including simple pleasures as well as absolute necessities. 

Since then, dozens of the independent businesses that trade here (25 at the last count, and the number continues to grow) have joined us in gaining Living Wage accreditation of their own. Ultimately, our aspiration is that everyone working in the Market, not just our own staff, will be able to enjoy the sense of security provided by this hugely meaningful commitment.

For us, doing this has always seemed a complete no-brainer. Borough Market is run by a charitable trust whose stated purpose is to serve the community. The amazing people who staff the Market, keeping it clean, safe and secure, supportive of our traders and welcoming for the millions of visitors who pass through each year, are a fundamental part of that community. So, it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that their needs are being served along with everyone else’s. That means paying them properly, with absolutely no exceptions, and giving them the comfort of knowing that their pay will keep pace with the cost of living, at the very least.

But what we’ve come to understand is that paying a fair hourly rate is not nearly enough. We believe that our people also have a right to know how many hours they’re going to work, and when they’re going to work them. Only then can they feel truly secure in their jobs and have the certainty they need to organise their lives and make plans for the future. That’s why we decided this year to become an accredited Living Hours Employer, alongside our continuing commitment to the living wage. 

This accreditation ­–­ also overseen by the Living Wage Foundation – requires us to provide all staff with a guaranteed minimum of 16 hours a week (if they want it), a proper contract that accurately reflects the hours they’re expected to work, and at least four weeks’ notice of their shift patterns, with guaranteed payments made if shifts are cancelled at short notice.   

The main reason we’ve done this is that the ethics are, we believe, impossible to refute – but it’s not just the people who directly benefit from this policy who will see a positive result. The whole Borough Market community is set to prosper. An organisation can only be truly effective if all its employees feel happy, valued and free from the worst financial pressures. And if we want to attract the best possible candidates whenever vacancies arise, making a clear, tangible statement to the world that we care about and look after our staff does no harm at all. The Borough Market trust wins, the staff win, and the public who depend so much on their hard work and diligence – they win too.

“SHOPPING IS A TRANSACTION – BUT IT’S ALSO AN EXCHANGE OF IDEAS, A CONNECTION BETWEEN TRADER AND CONSUMER”

Words: Giulia Crouch / Imagery: Sophia Spring, Orlando Gili

I’ve been thinking a lot about food and happiness lately; what does it really mean to eat well?

In fact, it’s the question I explore in my new book, The Happiest Diet in the World, in which I examine the eating habits of the longest-living populations on the planet – places known as the ‘blue zones’. It’s not a diet in the modern sense – a short-term period of unsustainable restriction that’s supposed to result in weight loss but usually results in misery – but instead pertains to the original meaning of the word: the Greek ‘diaita’, meaning ‘a way of life’.

It’s a way of life because food isn’t simply about feeding yourself – we’re not cars and our dinner isn’t fuel. Instead, it can be many things: a creative outlet, a way to relax, a source of comfort and excitement. Eating a great meal is an undeniably fun thing to do.

But primarily I think food is about connection. Cooking for someone is a way to bond with them and making a recipe is a way to connect with its writer. Then, there’s the act of buying food – a transaction of money for goods but also an exchange of ideas, a connection between trader and consumer.

In a supermarket it’s hard to access this feeling. Faceless, uniform and impersonal, produce is presented in plastic-wrapped trays from giant, buzzing fridges. But outdoor markets? Outdoor markets feel alive. These dynamic, ever-changing, playgrounds of food offer knowledge, inspiration and an experience that’s guaranteed to make you smile.

As a Londoner and someone who’s lived and worked within its proximity for many years, I think there is no finer example of this than Borough Market. Dating back around 1,000 years, Borough is composed of a huge host of independent traders selling everything from French cheese to Iraqi street food. It’s run by a charity, overseen by a board of volunteer trustees, which places a huge amount of importance on the wellbeing of the whole community – shoppers, traders and neighbours. I think you can feel this in the friendly, collegial atmosphere.

To me it’s always been a joyful place. I skip the crowds and visit on quiet weekday mornings or afternoons and take great pleasure in browsing without a shopping list, seeing what takes my fancy and what novelties I might discover. I come away with all sorts: jarred tuna in olive oil like you’ve never tasted before, a niche type of dense, nutty, German rye bread that you can’t buy anywhere else, mozzarella di bufala from my nonna’s Italian region of Campania, and some mushroom pâté too delicious to leave behind.

I love the feeling of closeness I get to the food. I can pick up and inspect the cabbages, I can squeeze a tomato to check its ripeness, I can smell the lemons and oranges as my mum’s voice chimes in my head: “If it smells of nothing, leave it behind.” And I can ask the seller where the produce has come from, what’s really fresh, what’s really good right now. Shopping like this leaves me feeling enlivened and full of ideas about what to cook.

While I’m always pleased with my purchases, it’s the interactions I’ve had in the market that leave me feeling so happy. I love food but I love the human stories behind food even more and Borough Market is chock-full of them. There are brilliant characters around every corner, each one of them a passionate expert in their speciality – nuts, British cheese, Calabrian ingredients, smoked fish, bread, you name it.

Marianna Kolokotroni, founder of Oliveology, is a font of knowledge about the Greek products she sells. She can speak at length about provenance, the varying tasting notes of olive oil and explain the difference between commercial olive production and her naturally cured ones. Then there’s Steve Hook behind Hook & Son, a stand selling organic, unpasteurised dairy products, who has endless entertaining and informative anecdotes. Who knew milk could be so fascinating?

There is always something delightful about people who are really enthusiastic about what they do and when what they do is food there’s an added element of generosity to it. These people want you to be well fed. Sophie Bertucat, manager of Olivier’s Bakery, epitomises this. “I could just say customers are coming because it’s bread and everybody needs bread … but no, it’s much more than that,” she says. “We’re passionate about baking. To be able to serve such quality products, you must be in love with and believe in what you are doing. It’s the love of food you feel here. You take a bite of wonderful fresh bread or a fresh pastry, and you feel the love of who made it. It makes you feel at home.”

You can taste the care that’s gone into the food and you can see the friendly and familiar faces of the people behind it. Philip Crouch (no relation!), owner of The Parma Ham and Mozzarella Stand, says that what’s so special is you’re often buying the product from the person who actually made it. “Where else do you get that?” he says. It feels more personal because it is.

“I would say that people come for the exchange with the traders,” says Philip. “My daughter Esther is a fantastic asset to the business because she’s friendly, she’s knowledgeable and she’s there – you don’t get that consistency when you go to a supermarket. You don’t see the same faces. All the stalls have impeccable products and are impeccably curated but I think it’s the relationships that are created between trader and customer that keeps people coming back.”

Nicholas Fitzgerald, owner of Mexican street food stall Padre, thinks it’s also the variety of food and people at Borough Market that makes it so captivating. “It’s a kind of microcosm of London,” he says. “And what’s the best thing about London? It’s the diversity – it’s definitely not the house prices or the traffic. At Borough Market there’s such a wide range of traders selling such a wide range of things. You can get Indian food, Japanese food and Iraqi food. It’s a representation of what’s going on in London.”

Of course, there’s the beauty of the market too but more than that, with its twists and turns it offers a sense of mystery, of intrigue. “It’s the kind of space where you’re constantly discovering and exploring,” says Nicholas. “It’s not a symmetrical space like other retail offerings. Each alleyway is different and there’s something new and surprising on every corner. It’s unusual to navigate and it gives it a sense of adventure.”

Finally, if you visit with friends you can share plates with them, try new foods together and compare notes. Eating food in company, as I learnt in my book, is scientifically proven to make you feel happier than eating it alone and what a marvellous place to do it; a true hub of eating well. Now that is the diaita for me.

The Happiest Diet in the World by Giulia Crouch (New River, £16.99) is available now

“THERE’S SUCH A BREADTH OF VARIATION: DON’T THINK THAT IF YOU’VE TRIED ONE CIDER YOU’VE TRIED THEM ALL”

Words: Tomé Morrissy-Swan / Portrait: Orlando Gili

When New Forest Cider started selling cider at Borough Market 25 years ago, it was a very different world. To most, the drink connoted two-litre plastic bottles of cheap white cider, underage drinking and getting blasted at festivals. “It was cans of very cheap, nasty commercial ciders, which really don’t have many apples in them at all,” says Mary Topp.

Over the past two decades that has changed. In the mid-noughties Irish brand Magners conquered the British market but, alongside that, a cohort of smaller artisan producers were growing more confident. New Forest Cider, based near Burley in Hampshire, was one of the key drivers of this renaissance. It was founded in 1988 by Mary’s father, Barry Topp, who inherited a smallholding with an orchard, quickly bought some pressing equipment and was soon making cider on a commercial scale, mostly with apples from Somerset and Herefordshire.

I’m talking to Mary at The London Cider House, a bar and shop within Borough Market owned by cider makers Ted Dwane, Tom Oliver and the Topps, as well as Felix Nash of The Fine Cider Company. The aesthetic is more akin to a modern wine shop and bar – elegant bar seating; bottles with prices scribbled in white marker lining the walls – than a pub with a barrel of scrumpy out the back. But the cider Mary pours me is inspired by scrumpy. “We have quite negative connotations of scrumpy, of backyard cider,” Mary explains. “However, we like to think ours now is a more grown-up sister of the nostalgic scrumpy of days gone by. It’s traditional scrumpy in a sense, containing 100 per cent apple juice, but this one in particular is a lightly sparkling cider.” It’s beautifully sweet with a nice, balanced acidity, a delicate fizz, and not too rough around the edges. It has been pasteurised, filtered, kegged and carbonated. “It’s a little bit cleaner than a traditional cloudy scrumpy,” adds Mary.

In the 1990s there wasn’t as much artisan cider as today – although you could find it at farm shops and many West Country pubs. Barry Topp spent hours driving up and down the country to fairs, but always wanted a London location to showcase his product. He ran a stall at the Food Lovers’ Fair of 1998 (which led to Borough Market in its modern form) and has run one here, in various guises, ever since.

Mary came on board in 2008, when the shop was still called New Forest Cider (it would later be renamed The Cider House, before changing again when it reopened after Covid under the current ownership). “Around 2010 there was a real boom in cider,” Mary explains. “This was post-Magners, they’d done a lot of marketing, and everyone was getting interested in cider.” That included many up-and-coming producers, who Mary wanted to showcase, and the shop soon sold ciders from across the country.

As with wine, there are myriad regional and varietal differences in cider. A key one is the split between east and west. In eastern counties like Kent, Sussex and Suffolk, cider is made mostly with culinary fruits, and is more acid-driven, according to Mary. In the west, cider fruits reign. They are smaller, have tougher skins and are more bitter, not great to eat. They produce more tannic ciders. Mary recommends Gospel Green, based in Hampshire, as one of her favourite eastern-style ciders. Of the western-style ciders, Pilton is one of the bestsellers at The London Cider House. Its ‘keeved’ ciders – a traditional method of enhancing the natural sweetness of the fruit – are a great introduction, says Mary.

Most Brits are unaware of the huge variety of ciders produced in this country. It can be still, sparkling, dry or sweet, distilled or fortified, made in a similar way to a pet nat wine, or bottled and fermented using the Champagne or Normandy methods. “It’s like the wine industry, there’s such a breadth of variation,” says Mary. “Don’t think that if you’ve tried one cider you’ve tried them all.”

One of The London Cider House’s owners is Tom Oliver, a man who has emerged as a leading cider maker over the past 25 years. Oliver started selling cider made on his family’s farm in 1998, when it ceased hop production. Today, he makes 100,000 litres per year, mostly using apples from nearby farms in Herefordshire, which he describes as the “perfect area for growing cider fruit.” When Tom began making cider there were around 12 makers in the county. He has helped it go from a “cheap product” to a valued drink, and there are now around 50 in Herefordshire.

“When I started making cider, it was pretty much based around dry, medium and sweet, maybe a sparkling,” says Tom. “That’s how people thought about cider.” For him, the craft beer explosion of the noughties piqued people’s tastebuds and encouraged them to seek out a wider range of drinks. Oliver makes 36 different bottled products, from blends rather than single varietals. Gold Rush, a barrel-aged, medium-dry cider, is one of his bestsellers, and each year’s drink tastes slightly different. His lush, sweet keeved perry is another popular choice. A slower seller is his Vintage, a dry, still cider. “That’s my type of cider,” he beams.

Artisan cider remains a niche, consumed by a tiny minority. “That’s one of the things we’re working on,” says Tom. Part of that drive is to boost its appeal as a food accompaniment. At The London Cider House, most come in 750ml bottles, which connotes an aperitif, or something to sip alongside a meal, rather than to simply get drunk. Mary recommends cider before a meal, or with starters like mussels. For Tom, it’s great with cheese (especially cheddar), a Christmas ham or even one of our national dishes. “A medium sparkling cider with a spicy medium-hot curry is the best drink.”

Britain drinks the highest volume of cider in the world, “but it’s not ingrained in our culture,” Tom laments. “Some people enjoy cider and a roast lunch on Sunday, but we haven’t got any longstanding food associations.” For the owners of The London Cider House, it’s high time that changed.

“THE ABUNDANCE OF SOFT, YOUNG GOAT AND SHEEP CHEESES IS IN HARMONY WITH SPRING’S EVER-LENGTHENING DAYS”

Words: Emma Young

Oh my goodness, we’re in May. When did that happen? Hooray for longer days, some imminent warmer weather (please) and a wider variety of exciting cheeses on cheesemongers’ counters!

Among approximately 6,000 other factors, some of my favourite aspects of cheese are batch variation and seasonality, and in particular the new additions we see gracing those counters in the springtime. Not all cheeses are made year-round. Most kidding and lambing occur at the beginning of the year, with kids and lambs galore creating adorable, destabilised chaos on farms when spring rolls around. With their arrival comes the natural start of milk production. This is why, at Borough Market, you will see an abundance of soft, young goat and sheep cheeses, in beautiful harmony with the season’s ever-lengthening days. 

For Molly Powell of Mons Cheesemongers, the arrival of these spring cheeses gives her the dopamine hit needed after a cold, dreary British winter – a “fresh sense of optimism that spring has sprung somewhere”, and the relief that you can “experience it through food if not through the weather!” The most numerous spring additions come in the form of dainty, elegant cheeses which we cheese folk call ‘lactics’. These are made slowly and gently, with a lactic acid coagulation playing a key role in transforming the milk to curd, and then to cheese. These cheeses, which sometimes have wrinkly rinds, ash coats or a topping of herbs, come in a variety of shapes but are usually on the smaller side. 

There are also cheeses that aren’t strictly seasonal, but whose character fits the mood at this time of year. During the warmer months our eating habits change and lighter, fresher meals are more welcome than powerful, full-flavoured, hearty dishes. I, for one, see a significant increase in my mozzarella di bufala consumption around now, and cheeses such as ricotta and stracchino start making cameos in my fridge. Fresh cheeses like these – cheeses that have seen little to no ageing – have flavours that are simple and representative of the milk (especially when made with raw milk) and haven’t developed the complex profile that come from long ageing and the controlled breakdown of components within the milk.

When you visit Borough Market, or any cheese shop, ask the cheesemongers if they have anything new and in season, but remember the classics also and don’t ever feel restrained to a certain style. I certainly never do. On a warm spring day, if you fancy a stilton instead of a goat’s cheese, no one will stop you – in fact you’ll be encouraged.

Here are a few of my favourite spring treats from this year:

BUCHETTE DE MANON

Buchette de Manon is a lactic goat’s cheese from Provence, available from Mons Cheesemongers. It is dainty and cylindrical in form – ‘buche’ means log, so a ‘buchette’ is a little log. Made by François and Vanessa Masto using the milk of their Rove goats, this has a gentle, elegant flavour profile, consciously minimal in its salt levels to allow the superlative milk flavour to really shine. It has a sprinkling of the herb ‘sarriette’ (savoury) on top and the texture ranges from soft and broken down, to a more structurally sound, whipped and aerated texture in younger batches.

CASTILLON FRAIS

How can a young, fresh, rindless cheese exude so much flavour? Castillon Frais, made by David and Fanette Ladu, is one of life’s mysteries. Also available from Mons Cheesemongers, it is a raw sheep’s milk cheese from Provence. It is so young and fresh that it arrives in vacuum-sealed bags and there are bumps on the surface of the cheeses that are still present from the holes in the drainage moulds they are formed in. Against all explanation this cheese has flavours of walnut & celery within – a veritable Waldorf salad! Castillon Frais can be (and in my house always is) eaten as it is, simply with a good baguette. It can however be used in a plethora of dishes – maybe crumble it over some roasted veg and potentially crack open a bottle of rosé with it if you’re feeling fruity.

GRACEBURN

This is a cheese which is not made seasonally, but really comes into its own at this time of year. Graceburn is a marinated, Persian fetta-style cheese made by Blackwoods Cheese Company in Kent. Graceburn’s marinade consists of cold-pressed English rapeseed oil, garlic, thyme and black pepper, making it, at times, taste like a full roast dinner – without the meat! Graceburn can be eaten as it is, drained from the jar, or eaten straight from the jar with a fork (this is my eating method of choice). It is perfect atop roasted vegetables or in any number of salads, and even in savoury pastries or as a addition to pasta or soup. I have yet to find a poor match. It even works with pickled onion Monster Munch (other crisp varieties are available).

PYGHTLE

Pyghtle (pronounced Pyh-tuhl) is a relatively new cheese on the British cheese scene, made by Emily Tydeman at Broughton Hall Farm in Suffolk. Emily makes unpasteurised sheep’s milk cheeses, cylindrical in shape with a wrinkly geotrichum (a yeast) rind. These cheeses are just back in season now, for their second year on the counters of Neal’s Yard Dairy. As they are new AND made with raw milk, the textures and nuances will vary throughout the season – something which should be celebrated. The batches which Neal’s Yard Dairy are receiving now are ricotta-like in texture – light and fluffy. Contrary to widespread belief, not all goat and sheep milk cheeses are strong and farmy, with this being a perfect example.

HEVER

Alongside these fresh, young seasonal beauties, we should still make sure we’re giving our attention to other styles of cheese. I love a wild card and my cheeseboards and selections will always keep you on your toes! Hever is a new cheese, also from Blackwoods Cheese Company, which has been in development for about a year, only really making its entrance onto the Market this spring. This is a washed-rind cheese, similar to a Burgundy classic. It is unashamedly bold, not hiding its inherent funk. Its texture is silky smooth, with a breakdown beneath the rind giving a secondary texture in the mouth. The flavours are brothy, savoury and meaty without going overboard. I highly recommend you seek this one out.

OTHERS TO SEEK OUT

The cheeses on Borough Market’s stands are ever-changing. There are some incredibly special cheeses there right now, including some at Brindisa from the Canary Islands, cheeses which have only just entered the UK market. Flavour-added cheeses can be gimmicky, but when they are executed properly they can be a thing of beauty, something that L’Ubriaco Drunk Cheese does well – for spring, look out for their Luna di Miele (a goat’s cheese in honey) and Vento D’Estate (a cow’s milk cheese in herbs and hay). For all your fresh cheese needs I cannot recommend highly enough The Parma Ham & Mozzarella Stand. Their cheeses are all impeccably sourced and I always head in their direction for my mozzarella di bufala, ricotta and occasional burrata needs.

The Cheese Wheel by Emma Young (Ebury Press) is available now from The Borough Market Store

“WE WANT YOUNG PEOPLE TO BE DISCERNING CONSUMERS AND TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT OF THEIR FOOD CHOICES”

Words: Mark Riddaway / Images: Adrian Pope

It was at a conference in 2007 that Stephanie Slater, the founder of a charity devoted to improving school meals, was party to the eye-opening testimony that would broaden the focus of her work and lead her a few years later to the halls and stalls of Borough Market. “I heard the headteacher of a primary school in London say that children in his school couldn’t identify an onion,” she says. “Not an aubergine or anything even slightly funky – a basic onion. I just thought, wow, that is a massive disconnect.”

Stephanie’s charity, School Food Matters, is now as committed to food education projects designed to bridge such glaring gaps as it is to its original calling of making children’s lunches less grim. “We want young people to be discerning consumers,” she says. “We want them to understand the impact of their food choices on their bodies and the planet.” The Young Marketeers programme, which began at Borough Market in 2013 and is now a cornerstone of the charity’s work, is part of that important mission.

There are two strands to the project, one for primary school students, one for secondary. The younger cohort are given the skills and resources they need to grow their own fruit and vegetables at school. After further training from the Market’s traders, they then bring their produce to Borough to sell it to directly the public, with all profits going to food distribution charities. “We want to make a solid connection that food comes from the soil, not the supermarket,” says Stephanie. “We see the pride, the awe and the wonder of primary school children who have planted some tiny seeds and now they’ve got all this stuff to sell, all this beautiful veg. It still blows my mind.”

Secondary school children, meanwhile, are involved in what Stephanie says is “quite a chunky piece of product development”: producing soups using surplus vegetables (which in future will be provided by Plan Zheroes, the charity that collects and redistributes leftover food from Borough’s stalls at the end of the trading day) and pairing them with fresh ciabatta baked under the tutelage of Bread Ahead Bakery & School. “The young people work with our food teacher to create soup recipes and a food panel from Borough, who are very exacting in their standards, go out to the schools to taste-test them.” The students then come to the Market to sell their wares, putting into practice what they’ve learnt about food labelling, marketing, pricing and sales.

Stephanie cites some striking examples of the misconceptions these projects are seeking to overturn: a young child who didn’t think a cucumber was ready to be picked because it hadn’t yet grown its plastic wrapper, older girls selecting ingredients from a surplus food hub who turned their noses up at beautiful loose vine tomatoes in favour of the packaged supermarket ones, “because they’re better”. She also talks glowingly of the positive impact on self-esteem of children finding their voices in a welcoming but markedly grown-up environment. “Every single time they come to Borough, you hear teachers say: ‘This child will not speak in the classroom and look at him now, talking away like a proper market trader.’”

What began in Borough has now become a nationwide initiative, with the same model rolled out to food markets in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Leicester, Stroud and Bedford. “The markets bite our hands off every time, because for them there’s always a challenge to get new families in,” says Stephanie. “This is such a great way to do that: you get the kids there, and they invite mum, dad, granny, auntie, and suddenly you’ve got a whole load of potential customers coming to the market, often for the first time, which is really lovely.”

Young Marketeers is just one of a wide range of food education projects run by Stephanie’s team, and the charity’s campaigning has also broadened in scope over the years. What began as a small, single-issue pressure group is now working at a scale and intensity that was never part of the original plan. The seeds of the venture were first sown in 2005 when Stephanie moved back to Richmond after working in Australia, enrolled her young children at the local school, “and the first words I heard from this outstanding primary were: ‘Sorry about the smell, that’s lunch,’” she explains. “It was a sort of a fait accompli that school food was terrible.” Appalled by the idea, Stephanie, who for the previous two decades had worked within the cut and thrust of film production “where no is not an option and you just plough in”, did what came naturally to her: refused to take no for an answer and just ploughed in, making it her mission to sort out her local borough’s school dinners. “I thought I could rock up there and knock the whole thing into shape in a flash, not realising how complex it was going to be.”

Her ignorance was, she thinks, a strength: anyone with greater awareness of what she calls “the labyrinth of intrigue” that is public sector procurement would have run a mile from such a thankless undertaking. But Stephanie persevered. “To cut a long story short, it took about three or four years, but by working with Richmond council and mobilising parents we managed to transform the school food it served in 38 primary schools. It went from frozen ready meals that nobody ate – only 26 per cent of kids across the borough were eating a school meal – to food cooked fresh at every site. The take-up doubled, there were economies of scale, and the meal price actually came down.”

Depressingly, even victories as significant as this have been dwarfed by the growing magnitude of the problems that need to be fixed – hence the relentless inflation of the charity’s mission. When Stephanie started out 16 years ago, too many children were eating bad food, but at least they had food to eat. “Huge namedrop here, but I was doing some work with Jamie Oliver recently and we were reflecting on the fact that when our campaigns started – mine began a couple of years after Jamie’s School Dinners – we were both campaigning about the quality of food. Years later, with children today going hungry and massive health inequalities across the country, it’s about access to food, which is just heartbreaking,” she says.

The Young Marketeers programme exposes children to vital knowledge about food: how it’s grown, how it’s sold, how it can be used, how it affects our health and the environment around us. But just because these young people have an opportunity to learn about high-quality, sustainable food doesn’t mean they can easily access it in their daily lives, such are the iniquities against which School Food Matters is battling. “Not that I’m ever going to give up doing so, but talking about organic, high-welfare food when children are hungry every day is hard to navigate,” says Stephanie. “What we want is for every child in every school to have a delicious, nutritious, sustainable meal, but what we must do first is give them the nutrition they need to thrive.”

“WORKING IN THIS INDUSTRY MAY NOT BE GOOD IN TERMS OF LIFESTYLE, BUT THE CREATIVITY – THAT’S THE BIT I LOVE”

Interview: Mark Riddaway / Images: Anton Rodriguez, Gilles Draps

There can’t be many restaurateurs who’ve travelled as many miles as David Carter. Born and raised in Barbados, he learnt his trade in Canada and California before moving to London in 2008, and while he’s very much at home here it’s his constant urge to span the world that keeps his creative juices flowing. By David’s rough calculation, he made 15 trips last year – to Japan, the US, Israel, Turkey and Greece (several times). And it’s on these trips that his ideas take form.   

Inspired by a pilgrimage around the southern United States, his barbecue restaurant, Smokestak, started out as a street food stand before finding a permanent home in Shoreditch in 2016. This was followed five years later by the Italian-inflected Manteca, feted for its handmade pasta and in-house butchery. His latest venture (or ventures, plural, if we’re splitting hairs) has arrived at Borough Market by way of the Ionian and Mediterranean seas.

Split across two floors of a large building tucked beneath the railway viaduct on Bedale Street are a pair of sibling restaurants: the quiet, refined Omá upstairs and the more boisterous Agora at street level. Both serve food rooted in the culinary cultures of Greece, both take the same meticulous, no-corners-cut approach to sourcing and preparing ingredients, both share an onsite bakery turning out breads developed by Eyal Schwartz of E5 Bakehouse. But each has its own distinct menu and atmosphere.

In the hectic weeks before their phased opening, David took the time to answer our questions.

How would you summarise your approach as a restaurateur? What unifying characteristics do your various venues share?

We create the kind of places we would want to go to. We really believe in accessibility, in everything from the price point to the offering. We want it to be a relatively easy format to read – not intimidating punters with the menu or wine list. We try to be best in class, whatever that means. Manteca is as good as any Italian in London. With Smokestak, we were quite late to the party, and everybody was like: “Why are you doing a barbecue restaurant? They’re so overdone.” But we just want to do things for the sake of excellence, and whether it’s overdone or not is irrelevant to us.

It always starts with the food, but a restaurant is about all your senses, so it’s much more than just that. It’s the team who made the food, it’s the plate it’s on, it’s the music in the background, it’s the apron the team’s wearing, it’s the entire package. We invest in creating an environment that’s impossible to replicate. So, you can take all the recipes if you want to, but we’re pretty confident you can never replicate the concept, because a restaurant isn’t just a recipe book.

What drew you to this spot on Bedale Street?

We’d never really done anything in a destination area. Our other sites are a little bit off the beaten track, a little bit harder to find. But I saw this building and loved it – the light is amazing, the visuals are amazing. I thought, there’s this amazing opportunity, this amazing site, somebody could do something amazing with it – it may as well be me. I can’t tell you how many days and nights I spent walking through Borough Market trying to figure out what we’d do. Working in this industry may not be good in terms of lifestyle, but the creativity – that’s the bit I love. It’s bit like an artist, right? They’ll put their heart and soul into a painting. I think it’s the same with this job: we put our heart and soul into these buildings. There’s so much that has to be invested on an emotional level – forget financial, forget time: on a pure emotional level, this is an expression of ourselves.  

What led you to a concept inspired by the food cultures of Greece?

Travel has inspired a lot of what I’ve done in my career. I was on a trip to the Greek islands and just fell in love – with the land and the people, the colour palette, the hills, the water, the overall balance of life on the islands. I came back and was like: “What was that all about? That was absolutely amazing.” The simplicity of the food, the open fires, the communal way of eating. I started to think about how we could interpret that here. I went to Greece eight times last year – to the islands, the north, Athens – just mining knowledge. These things don’t come straight away: you go, you scratch the surface, you go back again, you dig a bit more and you dig a bit more. From there, you start to formulate a narrative, a story. Ours is about Greece, but in the very broadest of brushstrokes. Some of the flavours we’re using at Omá and Agora are a lot bolder than you’d get in Greece, but in the romance and the integrity and the grit, it seems very Greek in many ways.

The name Omá is taken from the Greek word for ‘raw’. What can we infer from that?

At the end of the summer, I did another trip through the Greek islands, and it was just one of those holidays that felt too good to be true. I was absolutely blown away by it. On one of the last days of our trip we went to a restaurant that had a section on the menu called ‘omá’. When I found out it meant ‘raw’, I said: “Right, that’s it, we’re going to name our restaurant Omá.” There’s the raw fish, and the menu’s quite light and vibrant, but it’s more than that. It’s the raw simplicity of what we do, raw interiors, raw in terms of its honesty, purity and integrity. There’s no faffing around. We just do simple things incredibly well.

Downstairs at Agora, you’re not taking bookings. What’s the thinking there?

Well, I think Borough is a unique place, right? A market is a transient place – people pass through. You don’t need a reservation to visit a market. So, I don’t want somebody to come in the door and be told: “No, sorry, we’re fully booked.” That’s my idea of hell. Omá is on the first floor so it’s out of sight, at least when walking by, so it’s more destinational and it takes bookings. The downstairs, we just want to make part of the market. On all three sides of the building, we’ve put this amazing shopfront that retracts the entire way. When you look at the building during the day, the doors are open, you see straight through, and it has this whole sense of accessibility and welcome. It feels like you can just walk right through it and grab something on your way.

How does the menu at Agora differ from the food upstairs?

In Greece, seafood is quite expensive, but what’s reasonable are breads, pulses, grains and the animals that roam the land – pigs, lamb, chicken. We said: “What can we take from this book?” Upstairs, Omá is a bit more fish and cured vegetables, a bit more romantic, a bit more elevated. Agora is designed to be a restaurant by the people for the people – so it’s everyday, it’s quite low spend. At its heart is a souvla, with these 1.6m spits on a 2m wood-fired grill. The chickens we’ll leave whole, and we’re going to butcher the large animals, the pigs and the lambs. They’re two very different offerings but the same Mediterranean DNA.

Cooking over fire is a strand that runs through all your restaurants. What is it that appeals to you so much?

I mean, I grew up in Barbados, right? It’s 27 degrees all year round, you have a barbecue every weekend. I grew up around it. I think the idea of cooking over fire, there’s some quite primal. It’s variable, it’s not automatic, and it needs a lot more fiddling and tempering and care. Also, the flavours are incredible – all the meat or fish or veggies caramelising over charcoal as it spits up heat and smoke and flavour. It creates warmth and it draws you towards it. A fire literally draws people in. There’s something beautiful about cooking with fire, and just very raw – that word again!

Is there an appeal to running a restaurant surrounded by the Market’s produce traders?

The energy at Borough is pretty electric. It’s the hustle and bustle. When we were thinking about this, we got so inspired by walking through the markets in Athens, and I think being amongst that here, being part of it, being in it, is huge – for Agora especially. We want it to feel like you’re in the market. We could have done the exact same concept elsewhere, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact it’s going to have at Borough simply because of where it is.