Borough Market- London

London hosts some serious food culture. The farm-to-table ethos and a pride in the (oft marginalized) native cuisine ring loud and clear at the Burrough Market in the borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames around the London Bridge, old stomping ground of Charles Dickens and starting point of the Canterbury Tales.

We happened to be staying nearby and had heard great things. So we trucked up the street, appetites in tow and I don't think we expected the overwhelming, headspinning embarrassment of riches that we were about to witness. It was one of those moments when you want to soak in everything, but its so dizzying that you just follow your senses without paying attention to all the details. The following photo essay will capture that. We, also, being travelers without kitchen facilities were limited in use for raw ingredients. We did a lot of free sampling.

I also had done my research and knew that buried in the back of the market was a grill called "Maria's" that served up English style breakfasts either on a bap (pillowy roll) or a plate at affordable prices. In some ways I'm glad we filled up there first, since it kept our wallets in our pants for much of the morning. There were haughtier offerings at every turn, but I think we made a solid choice. Maria's excels at the basics- bacon, sausages, black pudding.




The madame of the grill had a hustle reminiscent of Patty and the rib-sticking, from scratch grub also had this familiarity. The food is ordered at the counter and then taken around the corner to a small, caravanesque shanty of an eating area. My girlfriend had an egg, bacon, and cheese bap that I did not get to try though she is still talking about. I was more in the market for a "Full English", though rather than the requisite baked beans, the starchy canvas of Maria's breakfast is bubble, essentially smashed and griddled potatoes.

Bubble with Bacon, Black Pudding, and Egg Breakfast

The bubble itself could have used more "squeak" or textural variation lent by friend onions, carrots, cabbage. It was a bit underseasoned too. The meats were the stars of the show, bacon thick and meaty with a little sweet to offset the salty. I love me some black pudding and this was mighty fine (and generous). A great base to the forthcoming culinary overload.

I'm just going to roll through the pictures now:



Butter!


Winter roughage


Shrooms!






Back in the game.










English muffins, for real.


Mo mushrooms!


Ridiculously overpriced Mexican sundries.


Eat 'em if you got 'em.

And here comes the cheese...

Crazily priced artisinal cheese.


I loved how each vendor dealt in only one or two varieties, those no doubt, produced by their specific dairies.






(The best one)


Loved this comte too.




Amazing, plump, incredibly briny Colchester oysters (and a clam, can't remember the name). Some of the best bites of the trip.

This market is ground zero for good eating in London. A must do!

Borough Market
239 Borough High Street
Camberwell, Greater London SE1 1, United Kingdom
020 7407 1002

Borough Market is amazing. Thanks for rekindling the memories with your pictorial. I have to get back to London.

I can't help but agree with your comment that BM is an embarassment of riches, but not in the sense that they're showcasing foie gras and white truffles. Rather, BM puts front-and-center the humble, rustic food indigenous to British culture; stilton, butter, grouse, deer, oysters, cheese, and even the beautifully fresh and colorful vegetables (5th or 6th picture down) which, if you look closely, are much snubbed, seasonally-appropriate winter/storage vegetables.

I love love love Borough Market. Thanks for the gorgeous pictures! Did you happen to stumble upon the toasted cheese sandwich stall?

Described thusly in a Telegraph UK article:

Deceptively simple, it is made from some of the finest ingredients in the world. Thick slabs of French Poilâne bread are folded around grated cheddar cheese made by the Montgomery family in Somerset.

One of the best toasties you'll ever have!

Read the full article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4195460/Platonic-ideal-of-a-cheese-sandwich-realised-in-Britain.html:

Have to point out there's also a Neal's Yard Dairy cheese shop just across the street from the Market as well.

Bad news, all. Borough Market is so-15-minutes-ago. (As is the expression, "so-15-minutes-ago").

I'll share a couple of pictures of Borough Market, but I have to say that our experience was marred by absolutely crushing crowds and the sense that we were in a huge food court, rather than a working market with local shoppers. This is, of course, a hazard in any city that hosts throngs of tourists. (Even the legendary Pike Place Market we visited in June was mostly a tourist scene, and we ourselves are tourists, after all.) In this case, we had been forewarned that this might dampen our enjoyment of Borough Market, so we went with diminished expectations, on a Saturday (the worst day by far). Even so, we found ourselves trudging along with the knowledge that we had made a big mistake.


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr


Untitled by Josephine2004, on Flickr

We tried without success to down a few oysters a Wrights, but found that reservations are essential there. I ate a salt beef sandwich, which reminded me of nothing so much as canned corned beef. (Next time, the Beigl Bake!) More enjoyable was the oily perfume of lamb fat that hung over the crowd, most likely from the lamb burger stand with the long, long, long line.

In retrospect, I ought to have taken a 20-minute walk south to the Maltby Street Market, a relatively new Saturday marketplace that has become London locals' replacement for the tourist scene at Borough. Apparently Bill Oglethorpe, (cheesemaker behind the LTH-er porklet-endorsed grilled-cheese sandwich) has decamped along with a number of former Borough Market merchants to Maltby Street. According to a web article I read, there were issues between the merchants and management of Borough Market related to maintenance, as well as the sense that few people were actually coming to purchase foodstuffs for cooking. So if you are looking for the Platonic ideal of a grilled-cheese sandwich at Borough Market these days, you will be disappointed. St. John Bread has a stall at Maltby Street, and London's best coffee, Monmouth, has a store there.

Given more time and a sturdier constitution, I would have taken the advice of blogger Helen Graves, to visit Brixton Market a once derelict market slated for demolition that has been revived and re-invigorated in recent years. Apparently their Farmers' Market is Sundays, but there are small shops there that are open all week. Carribean ingredients are well-represented there.

I found a fine version of "Bubble and Squeak"
being served at Canteen:

Josephine wrote:In retrospect, I ought to have taken a 20-minute walk south to the Maltby Street Market, a relatively new Saturday marketplace that has become London locals' replacement for the tourist scene at Borough. Apparently Bill Oglethorpe, (cheesemaker behind the LTH-er porklet-endorsed grilled-cheese sandwich) has decamped along with a number of former Borough Market merchants to Maltby Street. According to a web article I read, there were issues between the merchants and management of Borough Market related to maintenance, as well as the sense that few people were actually coming to purchase foodstuffs for cooking. So if you are looking for the Platonic ideal of a grilled-cheese sandwich at Borough Market these days, you will be disappointed. St. John Bread has a stall at Maltby Street, and London's best coffee, Monmouth, has a store there.

I don't believe that is correct. Kappacasein was evicted from Borough Market in May 2011, but they were back by the time I visited in October 2011. Certainly it was crowded, but the toasted cheese sandwich was incredible, and worth fighting the crowds.

Note that their website indicates that they do not sell the sandwiches at their dairy (near Maltby Street) location, only at Borough Market.

leepyswetr wrote:

Josephine wrote:In retrospect, I ought to have taken a 20-minute walk south to the Maltby Street Market, a relatively new Saturday marketplace that has become London locals' replacement for the tourist scene at Borough. Apparently Bill Oglethorpe, (cheesemaker behind the LTH-er porklet-endorsed grilled-cheese sandwich) has decamped along with a number of former Borough Market merchants to Maltby Street. According to a web article I read, there were issues between the merchants and management of Borough Market related to maintenance, as well as the sense that few people were actually coming to purchase foodstuffs for cooking. So if you are looking for the Platonic ideal of a grilled-cheese sandwich at Borough Market these days, you will be disappointed. St. John Bread has a stall at Maltby Street, and London's best coffee, Monmouth, has a store there.

I don't believe that is correct. Kappacasein was evicted from Borough Market in May 2011, but they were back by the time I visited in October 2011. Certainly it was crowded, but the toasted cheese sandwich was incredible, and worth fighting the crowds.

Note that their website indicates that they do not sell the sandwiches at their dairy (near Maltby Street) location, only at Borough Market.

Thanks for the correction, leepyswetr. I did not see Kappacasein at Borough Market, and believed the account & interview with Oglethorpe I read in a link to a print article-which of course I cannot locate just now. However, if people do decide to check out Maltby Street, they may still want to investigate whether Oglethorpe offers the cheese sandwich there on days other than Saturday. To be precise, the Kappacasein website specifies that the shop does not "serve sandwiches and raclettes from the dairy on Saturdays". This implies that they do offer the sandwiches at the dairy on other days of the week.

Seeing as I did not have that cheese sandwich, I cannot say whether having it would have changed my view of Borough market. I tend to think that it would not have done so. Speaking as someone who took the tube and a second train and walked 3 miles through Hackney to get to F. Cooke for eels, I am not one to complain about the investment of time if the overall experience is worth it. In the case of Hackney, I found a part of the city that was new to me and that I enjoyed overall. Unfortunately, I didn't have the same experience at Borough Market. I wish I had invested my time in another of the London markets, and I wanted to pass that caveat here to those who are planning London trips.