This weekend we headed to the world famous Borough market. The place was absolutely rammed with people and from the numerous different accents I detected, most seemed to be tourists. But hey, we could hardly complain about that, having only been in London for a grand total of two weeks ourselves. On the plus side of course, it meant that I didn’t feel that much of an idiot darting around everywhere taking photos when everyone else was doing exactly the same.
We were pretty hungry before we even got there and being faced with the smell of a hundred different food stalls all cooking up something, we caved pretty early on, maybe less than a minute, but who’s counting. After I had inhaled a double burger loaded with onions, mustard and ketchup, which I have to say was pretty darn good we went on a more considered tour of the other stands. They had everything a food lover may desire, from fresh fruit and veg to beef stew and burgers, you could even wander around with a glass of prosecco if you wanted to do it in style. After gorging ourselves on those burgers a little tipple was exactly what was in order but we thought going around market stalls with a glass of bubbly was a little OTT, so we opted for a more traditional beverage for this time of year, a glass of piping hot mulled cider. Stood there in the cider area sipping away at my warm brew gave a perfect opportunity to take in the sites and sounds without having to fight the crowds, worrying about spilling my precious appley goodness.
Just opposite there was a stall selling ostrich meat and kangaroo burgers and although I was starting to get a tad peckish again, I managed to resist. Well, long enough to get about 100 m around the corner that is, where I came across a biltong stall that had racks of the stuff and it was at that point my resolve faded and I bought enough to keep me going for the rest of the day. After all biltong is a real man’s snack!
When I was in South Africa a few years ago I had the amazing opportunity to go down inside a working Platinum mine and when we go to the surface, we had a big buffet lunch waiting for us. It was at this point I realised why South African’s are so huge. In the place of the obligatory bowl of crisps there was in fact a giant bowl of biltong that they ate by the hand full. They probably went through the equivalent of several large rump steaks in protein simple as a supplement to the sandwiches and other stuff that was there, incredibly. It was at that point I felt the need to pick up the mantle for the british contingent and set out on an epic two weeks of biltong consumption. The funny thing was that within the game reserves that we visited, having had a lovely day watching the animals you could then go to the shop and next to the cuddly toys of said animals were trays upon trays of different types of biltong. Not simply differing in seasoning either, you could have impala, buffalo, kudo, you name it they probably had it and top to it off, it was delicious! So when I was confronted by racks of home made biltong courtesy of the big South African fella behind the counter I couldn’t resist and although it didn’t quite match some of the stuff I had in South Africa it was still pretty tasty stuff.
After my two courses of meat and more meat, the only thing I needed to round off my wholesome meal was something that would satisfy my sweet tooth and then I found it. A stall filled with giant chocolate brownies, it was if I had died and gone to heaven and as we made our way back to the tube I had to plead with my fiancee to take it away from me, as I had found myself on automatic eating mode, just eating for the sake of it. This way at least I had some left for when I got home 30 minutes later, now that’s self restraint for you, thank god I’ve got a high metabolism otherwise I’d be the size of a house.
All in all we had a great day at Borough market and I absolutely loved the food. There are a few other markets in London that I’ve been recommended and if I can ever summon the motivation to get up at 6 or 7 on a saturday morning I’d love to go to the seafood market at Billingsgate. But if you have any recommendations of other foodie places to go in London please leave a comment and let me know.
