Open season

“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.