London Markets
After Scotland, we wanted to round out our UK world tour with some time in London, where we spent time with one of my old friends from Bali. I volunteered with him, Liam, and he’s from Scotland but now works in London and was able to host us for a couple days. As you must in every new city you go to, we hit all the main tourist attractions, the London Bridge, London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, you know the drill.
What was the most magical experience of them all, however, was finding a delicious food market on our walk back from the London Eye. Along this walk, there are lots of shops, restaurants, and pop up stores that make it very fun to walk through. They even had playing areas for kids and a cute carousel ride with the London Eye in the background. Naturally, we participated in both.
After getting to the end of the walk bordering the river, we walked up the steps to a contemporary center and museum, took a right, and were stunned by the phenomenal site of a seat of tents and waves of yummy smelling food reaching our noses. We later found out that this wonderful site is known as the Southbank Centre Food Market. This location offers street food, produce, and drinks of all varieties on Friday-Sunday in the daytime for very reasonable prices.
Our favorite discoveries of the experience were two things, the first being the curry stall. It was a cloudy, windy and somewhat chilly day out, and one of the stalls was making warm curry in huge pans that you could smell from a mile away. I don’t know if it was the chill from the weather or because we hadn’t eaten all day, but I swear that was the best curry I’ve ever tasted. The first spoonful he handed us as a sample melted in our mouths and warmed our souls.
A couple stalls down, we discovered another favorite food: fried brie. Did you know you can even fry brie ? Well they do it at this market in London, and it is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. You order your food and it takes about 10 minutes for them to make it fresh, and it’s served as these little fried blobs of heaven with a delicious jam dip to go with. It was the smoothest creamiest cheese I’ve ever tasted.
As London had the most diversity of people and cultures that we’ve seen so far in Europe, it seemed fitting that such a market would be so well done, with everyone sharing their specialties and creating such a fun smorgasbord of flavors. If you ever find yourself in Camden whilst in London, make sure to stop by the Southbank Center Food Market to make your every food dream come true!
Bis zum nächsten mal!
Kara