MADE famous by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant, Notting Hill has never lost its stellar appeal. Every Saturday, crowds line Portobello Road Market looking for the most famous door in London, eager to recapture the romance of the silver screen.
But like so much of London – this is a tale of two cities or should I say streets. The first belongs to guide books with British brands eagerly coveting for the tourist pound among the mobile crepe stalls, antiques and cheap souvenirs. The other is more local – where residents and traders remember a Portobello Road of the eighties. A time when rents were cheap and W11 was more village than high street. For many such as Books For Cooks, Ceramica Blue and even newcomer Provence Village Butcher, Portobello Road is about community, where life is punctuated by the familiar rhythms of its weekly fruit and vegetable market, lone buskers, and the Rastafarian beats of the second-hand clothing stores. It’s a place where home-made preserves are for sale in a front yard with the sign “bring jars back if you can”. Go on a Friday and you’ll get the chance to experience a more local W11. Start your walk at Notting Hill Gate station, walking down the side streets to get to Portobello Road. This is the famous antique area where you can buy anything and everything from Birmingham guilloche to 1930s enamelled soup ladles. Quality is varied and so is the price but that’s the appeal. It’s also home to Hummingbird Bakery (no.33) - famous for its red velvet cupcakes (it opened its first store here in 2004), GAIL’S Artisan Bakery (no. 138) and the wonderful La Cave a Fromage for its selection of fine cheeses (no. 148). With soaring rents, high street brands have taken over, but directly off Portobello Road, you’ll find some true locals. On Westbourne Grove is Alexeeva & Jones – an artisan chocolate salon of truffles, chocolate bars, pralines and ganaches from over twenty-three countries, including the owners own (n.297). Opposite at number 300 is Still Too Few – if it’s open go in and see author Elizabeth David’s kitchen dresser among its collection of antique kitchenalia.
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JUST like a true Londoner, the city's bees like to keep it local. Just ask the colony at Regents Park. Kept by Pure Honey’s Toby Mason, they have been producing some of London's finest for the last five years. This is a honey that changes with the seasons: you might detect elderflowers and limes during one season and roses, the next. It's rare for the bees to venture beyond the park, so what you taste is what has been in bloom. Stockists include Sourced Market. It's hearting to see this wonderful honey back on the shelves after a miserable 2012. You can read about Pure Food here.
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February 2017
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