The Independent Shopper: Tart London

We’re both very lucky to be living in London as we have an abundance of wonderful independent retailers nearby. We are North London-based and huge fans of the greengrocer Parkway Greens in Camden. It’s the most inspiring place to walk into: there’s seasonal produce everywhere, beautiful colours and vegetables that almost take your breath away, and even purple cauliflower and white strawberries!

We love creating recipes from the produce there. It’s perfect for our love of making big Asian stocks, as the shop stocks specialist ingredients like lime leaves, lemongrass, fresh turmeric, micro-coriander, and all different types of chilli. We wait eagerly for the start of each season – we can’t tell you the amount of times we’ve ‘hurrahed’ when apricots or borlotti beans finally arrive!

Around the corner is our go-to fishmonger in Primrose Hill called La Petite Poissonnerie, which has the best quality and variety of fresh fish. They call themselves London’s fusion fishmonger – French in spirit and Japanese for the quality – so this is where we get all our sushi-grade fish from.

For cheese we head to Marylebone to La Fromagerie, which boasts the most wonderful selection of fantastic cheeses; it is heaven in there. For meat we go to The Ginger Pig – Lucy’s farm actually supplies them with grass-fed Galloway beef and hopefully lamb soon, too! On a Sunday we head to Queens Park Farmers’ Market to pick up fresh bread, eggs and other goodies like wild mushrooms and homemade kimchi.

We make a huge effort to shop in independent shops for both work (our catering jobs) and for personal shopping for so many reasons. Most importantly quality, but also to know where the food came from, which is important. We feel that reducing the distance between where food is produced and where it is consumed increases accountability, and offers all sorts of health, environmental and societal benefits.

Tart London’s book, A Love of Eating, is published by Square Peg and available to buy now