Traders of the month

Run by the Le Blais brothers, who are originally from the Pays d’Auge area of Normandy, Une Normande a Londres sources cheeses from suppliers all over France. Offerings range from familiar favourites such as camembert de Normandie and brie de Meaux, to the more obscure tête de moine and Sainte Maure de Touraine. Many of the stall’s products are regional specialities which have been granted protected AOC status.

Sharon Crane left life in the corporate world to turn her love for plants and flowers into a business, teaching herself new skills and learning from other florists along the way. Her permanent stall, The Gated Garden, has been at the Market since 2013, brightening Three Crown Square with its colourful array of flowers, plants and beautiful garden ornaments.

Quality rather than name recognition is the order of the day at Bedales wine bar and shop, where wines from Lebanon sit next to the classic wines of France. Explore the ever-changing wine menu and enjoy a glass alongside a daily-changing menu of small plates, with ingredients sourced from around Borough Market.

Using authentic methods, traditional recipes and superb ingredients, Artisan Foods offers 12 styles of German bread: from the dense, dark and seedy to crusty golden country-style loaves, all made with sourdough starter and proved slowly in the Walthamstow bakery. In keeping with Germanic ‘kaffe und kuchen’ culture, the stall also offers a range of cakes and pastries including bee-sting slice or ‘bienenstich – decadent layers of creamy custard, almonds and honey – and glossy, mahogany glazed giant Bavarian pretzels.

In summer 2018, Patrick Martinez headed to Portugal, on the lookout for canneries with sustainability, quality and style at their hearts. He met with the famed conserveries outside Porto and together they chose the tins that best met what he was looking for – bright sardines sourced from morning markets and tinned the same day; pole-and-line caught tuna, marinated in the best olive oils and sauces; fish tinned used traditional, hands-on techniques. After that it was back to the UK to start The Tinned Fish Market.

Brought to Borough by the team that supplies the bread for Nana Fanny’s famed salt beef beigels, Jewish bakery Moishe’s has been feeding hungry Londoners since 1930. Meaning ‘from the water’, the name refers to the way the bakers prepare their bagels: boiled in a pot of bubbling water and baked till golden – ‘the proper way’, as they call it. Alongside hand-tied bagels, over the years they’ve also mastered the art of weaving the perfect challah bread, the techniques for which have been handed down through three generations.

Wine bar and small plates restaurant Elliot’s sources many of its ingredients directly from the Market, offering a menu that reflects the range of seasonal produce available in simple, flavoursome dishes cooked over a wood-fired grill. The inventive wine list showcases the diversity of natural wines sourced from farmers who grow organically or biodynamically.

Richard Haward’s forefathers have been harvesting oysters in the shallow creeks leading from the river Blackwater to the west of Mersea Island, Essex, since as far back as 1792. For the past 100 years the Haward family have been nurturing the same stretch of Salcott Creek, where the warm temperatures provide the perfect conditions for these tasty bivalves to fatten, cultivating Colchester native and Gigas oysters.

Borough Cheese Company specialises in spectacular wheels of comté cheese made in the Franche-Comté region of eastern France and matured in the Fort Saint Antoine owned by Marcel Petite, one of the most respected affineurs of comté in France. Dominic, who runs the Borough Market stall, visits the fort every six weeks to taste and select the finest comté, as well as a semi-soft, unpasteurised tome. He also sources a raw milk farmhouse gouda from a family-run farm in Holland, a raw milk blue cheese from Warwickshire and a delicious Bermondsey Red.

Greengrocer Paul Crane has been a familiar presence at Borough Market for many years. Paul’s stall is always weighed down by baskets and bowls packed with a generous selection of colourful produce: from raspberries, blueberries, cranberries and cherries to cauliflowers, aubergines, tomatoes and onions.