Bacon butties and shucked oysters: What to eat in Borough Market
Lick your deliciously sticky fingers (bring wet wipes) and admire the market halls dating from the 1850s with this thoroughly British tour.
Lamor has been shucking oysters for eight years in London’s bustling Borough Market – fat briny molluscs from the River Blackwater in Essex. They’re served from a little stall run by the Haward family, who have been farming oysters since 1769.
A luxury today, oysters are London’s original street food, and the second stop on a three-hour amble with tour operator Devour that combines noshing our way around this historic market (dating back 1000 years) with riveting insights into Southwark landmarks (more on Bridget Jones later).
Our excellent guide, Rowena, London born and bred, meets us at the Southwark Needle and begins by painting a picture of the old city gateway festooned with heads boiled in tar (including that of the unfortunate Thomas More).
It’s not the most appetising start to a food tour but it’s chilly enough for us to push this mental picture aside and follow Rowena into the thronging market. It’s highly atmospheric, like a film set, with narrow streets, the clatter of trains overhead and stalls jammed beneath brooding bridges.
First stop is a bacon butty accompanied by a discourse from Rowena on the evolution of the sandwich. After this, Lamor’s expertly shucked oysters serve as a palate cleanser before we up the calorific intake at The Ginger Pig. Long queues await its famous fat sausage rolls made using free-range pork. Everywhere we go, Rowena greets stallholders, skipping the queues while providing valuable gastronomic info. To wit: the Brits eat 140 million sausage rolls a year.
While licking our deliciously sticky fingers (bring wet wipes), we admire the market halls dating from the 1850s and adorned with decorative pineapples – “a symbol of power and prosperity,” says Rowena. The fruit was so expensive it was possible to rent, rather than buy, a fresh pineapple for a table centrepiece, for the equivalent of £2000 ($3840) in today’s money.
Rowena has scheduled dessert in the middle of our tour at Humble Crumble, apparently the world’s first dedicated crumble bakery. It has devised a pretty, pink sweetie that’s become a bit of an Instagram craze; a little cup filled with apple crumble, superior custard, topped with melted marshmallow and sprinkled with rose petals. It’s a rich dessert requiring our full attention, so we join the crowds seated in a tiered arena-style set-up.
It’s a slightly bacchanalian scene that fits well with the history of Southwark, a riverside neighbourhood that was once the pleasure garden of London. Think: bear-baiting, bull fights, brothels and cartloads of oysters. To walk off the crumble we explore some of this heritage, including the remnants of the great hall of the 13th-century Winchester Palace, from where the bishops ran the sex workers. Many are buried in the poignant Crossbones graveyard uncovered by construction workers in the 1990s.
Back into the market, we have excellent beer-battered fish and chips before marching on (our ever-expanding stomachs) past the replica of Francis Drake’s Golden Hind and the medieval Clink debtors prison.
Our last stop is a Dickensian pub hidden in the old arches of London Bridge, The Mug House, for a British cheese plate, sticky toffee pudding and glass of Madeira.
It has been an epic, thoroughly British, tour. Rowena knows her food, history and movies. She points out moody laneways featured in Harry Potter, and Bridget Jones’s front door (from the original movie). And the exact spot where Colin Firth and Hugh Grant brawl in the street (for me, a cinematic highlight). You don’t get this on many food tours.
In the know
The Ultimate London Food Tour: Borough Market & Southwark departs 10am with a maximum 12 participants; vegetarian and gluten-free catered. £85.80 ($165) an adult.
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