Brixton’s Best Food Shops

Rachel Manley, who runs the Breakfast Club, gives us a guide of Brixton’s best food shops

Brixton has arguably one of the best food markets in London and it just keeps getting better.

But with the men shouting ‘half price’ at you and the overwhelming selection, it can be a pretty intimidating place to know where to start… here are my recommendations for the best food shops in Brixton.

1. Nour cash and carry, Electric Avenue
Known as favourite shop in my house, the tiny entrance hides what I think is by far the best version of the generic shops along Electric Avenue. Worth a wander around, if only to make new discoveries in random corners. This is where I buy fruit and vegetables particularly huge bunches of fresh herbs including lovely thyme and dill, onions, garlic, ginger, chillies and packs of cherry tomatoes for 50p! I also buy spices, pomegranate molasses, chopped tomatoes, tinned beans, rice and lentils here. All much better quality than the supermarket and loads cheaper. You can also find huge tubs of yoghurt and labneh in the fridges as well as haloumi.

2. Wing Tai
The Chinese supermarket on Electric Avenue is really well stocked. I buy huge bottles of soy sauce and fish sauce, there’s lemongrass and Thai basil in the fridges and I recently bought everything I needed to make sushi for about £10. While the staff aren’t exactly friendly and they don’t speak great English, they will help you find what you’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to ask!

3. Dagon’s Ltd.
There’s some pretty unappetising fish for sale in Brixton Market, dig a little deeper and you can find some fantastic stuff. Mash & Sons on Atlantic Rd is ok, but my very favourite is Dagon’s in Brixton Village. They’re always really busy (definitely a good sign) and they can offer advice on the type of fish to buy and how to cook it. Best of all, they’ll fillet and prepare the fish for you if you ask nicely. Salad Club also recommend Jeffries by Franco Manca.

4. Continental Delicatessen
Turn right out of Brixton station, keep going until you hit Atlantic Rd and the bright blue awning of Continental deli is right in front of you. It’s worth a visit for all the usual deli stuff, in particular the great cheese selection, delicious chorizos and Portuguese custard tarts. I also spotted homemade pestos in the fridge. Rosie’s Deli also has a nice selection of deli foodstuffs and you can get a cake and coffee while you’re there.

5. Giggly pig
Much like fish, finding meat in Brixton Market can be hit and miss. I tend to go to the farmers’ market on Brixton Station Road on Sundays as I know it’s all local and free-range. Although a little lacklustre, it’s worth it for the excellent sausages and pork from Giggly Pig. If you head down later on (after 1pm) you can usually get a good deal. There’s also a really good farmer’s market on on Saturday’s opposite Oval station.

6. Breads etc
Breads etc has been open in Clapham for a while and recently opened in Brixton Market. This is a chance to buy their top quality bread without the queues they usually have in Clapham, plus they do a mean brunch.

Sometimes I feel like I’m only scratching the surface, like when I discovered the fantastic chorizo in Continental Delicatessan or that you can get huge bags of ground almonds in Nour Cash and Carry. Where are your favourite food shops in Brixton? Leave suggestions in the comments.

Brixton Supper Clubs

The trend for supper clubs continues unabated in London, but Brixton was one of the first off the marks. It has a plethora of now well-established supper clubs and last summer I went to three of them.  Better late than never, here are the reviews:

Warning: supper clubbing doesn’t come cheap.

Our top pick: The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club is run by Rachel Manley from her tiny flat in the centre of Brixton. It is the most unpretentious of them all. Two tables and twelve people are crammed into her kitchen, where she also prepares the food. That means you’re not just encouraged to share and chat with all the other guests – you have to. Rachel is generous with her food – you can ask for seconds and there are constant refills of coffee, tea or home-made elderflower cordial. And the food reflects that generosity. We start off with coconut toast and lime marmalade. The coconut toast is just about the Best Thing Ever, buttery, packed full of coconut and not too sweet. It’s followed by Turkish baked eggs on sourdough with sausages from Brixton farmers’ market. That might look like a small portion below, but it was plenty given how much we still had left to eat and Rachel even offered up more sausages for anyone still wanting. The brunch ended with ice cream sandwiches – again not too sweet – and a beautifully wrapped take-home gift of pistachio macaroons.

Rachel doesn’t just do breakfasts anymore either. Her suppers are £25 and her brunches are £17.50. See here for booking details and photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A supper club in the market: The Salad Club

Ellie Grace and Rosie French together make the Salad Club. They write a food blog of the same name, charting their experiments with food, mainly from Brixton Market. The recipes all look lovely and they deservedly won the Observer Food Monthly Best UK Food Blog award last year, but I am going to be controversial here – the food at their supper club, hosted by Cornercopia in September 2010, was not worth the £25/head we paid for it. I was a demanding customer before I’d even reached the table – I forgot that one of my guests was a vegetarian until the day before and then another guest cancelled, so I had to change my reservation. All very annoying for the supper club host who has to do everything on a tight budget and plan meticulously ahead. That said, it didn’t much change how I felt about the food. The starter, smoked haddock and sweet potato chowder, was certainly delicious – warm and hearty. But the main – rare roast beef with beetroot, horseradish and dressed rocket – was a rather dull, limp dish. The beef was a little cold and the vegetarian option merely replaced the beef with lentils, which bizarrely tasted strongly of mustard – a dish of lentils, raw beetroot and not much else. Fun. The plum, pistachio and almond tart which followed was tasty, but overall the meal just wasn’t special enough for the expense (remember that doesn’t include alcohol, because it’s BYO). I could have eaten much better at Bellantoni’s around the corner for £10 a head.

The Salad Club are now available for hire, cooking everywhere from private homes to festivals. See here for details.

Design foodie heaven: Saltoun Supper Club

Saltoun Supper Club is the big daddy of the Brixton supper clubs. It’s notoriously difficult to get a table there but it’s worth the wait just to see Arno Maasdorp’s flat. Maasdorp, the creator of Saltoun Supper Club, is a food stylist and a design obsessive. The white-washed stairs leading to the dining room are lined with well-placed objects, from brightly coloured plastic bears to a single bucket of perfectly sharpened pencils. The dining room itself is like a magic den – lit only by coloured lamps and tealights, strange objects sit artfully on the walls and a chandelier made from a branch hangs above the main table.

The food is mostly beautiful too. We started with a very simple dish – stuffed peppers and roasted beets with hummus. In fact, it seemed a little unnecessary given what was to follow. The star of the show was the next starter –  Truffle Infused Cauliflower Gnocchi with Pecorino. Then we were instructed to troop upstairs to the living room, to digest and prepare for the main course. And the living room wasn’t lacking in design novelties either:

Saltoun is different to Rachel’s Breakfast Club in that you are not especially encouraged to mix with the other guests – we remained on our table of two and even in the interval (for it was like being at a show), no-one really talked outside of their own group. Arno himself makes a real effort to chat to everyone, but it lacked the down-to-earth easiness of the Breakfast Club.

The main was Pork Fillet, Celeriac with Pea & Bean Salad. Delicious again – although the beans were on the chewy side. And then it was time for the stunning pudding – chocolate in various different guises – and a beautiful array of petit fours and fruit. Yum.

£30 a head. BYO. See here for booking details.