Borough Market - London, England

January 30th, 2008 by Eleise, Itinerant World Traveler

Saturday was a red-letter day. To start, we joined what felt like a thousand fashionable people in Southwark at the Borough Market, a popular weekend farmer’s market in existence since 1276, at least. My traveling partner was in seventh heaven, every few minutes exclaiming, “Man, I just love this. Smell that, would you? Oooh, lookie here!”

Under cover of railway and trains leaving London Bridge Station, the market is divided into two long and twisty sections. We walked along cobblestones, through a grand Victorian arch, and into a buzzing hive of noises, smells, and colors — but despite the crowd I hardly felt crowded. People seemed to move around and past one another with a forgiving kind of rhythm, allowing for the steady exchange of commerce and browsing of a wide variety of items: organic fruits and veg, truffles and cakes of chocolate, sausage and butter and cheese, loaves of herbed ciabatta and sourdough — all so very, very fresh.

I took a sort of macabre liking to a stall belonging to Sillfield Farm, which — among free-range blood pudding, haggis, and all kinds of sausage — specializes in wild boar meat. A stuffed, tusked, hoary boar’s head perches above the meat counter. This “magnificent animal” was evidently hunted to extinction in England 300 years ago, but has been brought back commercially and now is ready for eatin’. We visited twice and took home some delicious chorizo.

Being so close to my food source isn’t always a thrill. At one intersection of the market lanes we encountered strings of newly slaughtered, fully furred rabbits and deer — gutted and hung on display. It’s possible I was in a bit of shock (we came to this just after the lovely florist’s stall), for they struck me as works of art, with Pollock-like drops of blood spattering the ground below.

Plenty of vendors throughout the market offer their raw fare on the grill for a more palatable, sizzling lunchtime meal: salted beef baguettes, ostrich burgers, sea scallops with bacon. Perhaps the longest line was for the ever-satisfying toasted cheese sandwiches.

After some nourishment we plunged ahead and found ourselves among the specialty, single-item stalls: cocoa, blueberries, tea, sea spaghetti. Vendors peddling olives ran a brisk business, dipping into alternating pots brimming with glossy, speckled round morsels in so many brines. We were especially drawn to the dairy stalls, who offer creamy, pungent, stinky, ripe cheeses, some wrapped in mold-dotted cloth. (The latter is visually intriguing but possibly a novice buyer’s deterrent.) My partner is definitely an expert, for he picked a few winners in a round wheel of white Cheshire, a thin triangle of Comté from France’s Jura mountains, and two blocks of butter freshly churned on the farm. We almost bought a jar of clotted butter, but we couldn’t decide exactly what we might do with it. Any ideas?