Portobello Market started as a fresh-food market in the 19th Century, but expanded in the 1960s to include the renowned Saturday antiques market at the eastern end of the street, and an assortment of clothing and accessories stalls to the western end. It is of course more recently known for that Richard Curtis film, Notting Hill, and is also mentioned in many popular songs.

Take a walk down the length of the entire street to take in all the stalls; street food steams and bubbles in huge pots serving Ghanaian curry, Spanish paella, and grills of German chicken Schnitzel and sausages.
Have a browse through the antiques, it’s more than the usual furniture and china. I found a guy selling items of old navigational and military navigation pieces, clocks from old Russian MiG and US jets. A unique bedside clock for £200!

I tend to jump in the car with my friend and head down there every Saturday. If you’re visiting London and self-catering, I strongly recommend coming here to buy your fresh fruit and veg, the flavours are so much better.

Tomatoes are deep red and juicy, unlike the fluffy tasteless flesh of their irradiated cousins found in supermarkets. The fresh bread stall is a guilty pleasure, mostly for the mountains of sweet pastries, muffins and iced doughnuts that call at me from my childhood, or is that voice coming from a future cardiac surgeon? Who cares! At about 16:30, the prices are reduced to clear and you can pick-up three doughnuts for a quid or two!

So you have to pay a bit more than in the supermarket, but your money goes to a real small business and you’ll have experienced the theatre of street vendors, rather than the anonymous and sterile experience of a supermarket queue.

It’s a busy place so don’t necessarily expect to get a deep, personal conversation from a stall-holder, and if they look a bit grumpy, it’s mostly because they’ve been up since about 05:00, so give them a bit of conversation, a bit of humour and they soon open up. Love ‘em.

By Ben Pendrey from SpottedByLocals.com/london
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