There’s long queues and sparse shelves at Tesco and Sainsbury’s. Ocado and the other online supermarkets have few delivery slots. Fear not, there are great alternatives for shopping for food and other groceries.
fruit and vegetables
Portobello Road Market has two fantastic fruit and veg stalls open every day except Thursday and Sunday, just near the corner of Elgin Crescent. They are overflowing with fresh fruit and vegetables, parking nearby is much easier than normal, and there is hardly anyone shopping there, so being outdoors it’s safer than queuing in the supermarket.
Apparently New Covent Garden Market, London's wholesale fruit and veg market, is 75% down on sales at the moment, because they are not selling to restaurants. So they are now offering to sell direct to people rather than companies boxes full of fruit and veg, delivered to your door, presumably at pretty much wholesale prices. You can buy these on their website at this link.
The local food shops are also are very well stocked for fruit and veg. Try the wonderful Solomans and the other 3 shops up on Randolph Avenue just near the tube, or if you have a car Zagros Food Centre on the corner of Harrow Road and Elgin Avenue. They also all have fresh bread, including great arabic bread, fresh herbs and remarkably well-priced spices, mediterranean cheeses and pretty much all the other groceries you may need.
For those with cars, given that there is no congestion charge and no traffic consider a trip into a West End supermarket. It took me 10 minutes to drive into the big Sainsburys in Tottenham Court Road on a Thursday morning, there was more staff than customers so no queue and the shelves were stocked with everything you could want (including loo roll!).
meat and fish
Our local butcher Provenance down on Clifton Road seems well stocked and the queues don’t look too bad. They also do home delivery.
Celebrated Marylebone butchers The Ginger Pig are also doing deliveries of their top quality meat,
There is also a butcher up on Portobello Road called Master Butcher who is open every day and has decent prices. He’s just south of the Lancaster Road corner, so if you’re down at Portobello doing your fruit and veg shop you can wander up and buy your meat as well.
McKanna Meats is a butcher in Holborn who again normally do most of their business with restaurants but are now offering free delivery to people at home. They have a wide range of products which you can see at www.mckannameats.co.uk, and are offering free delivery for a minimum order of £40, so rather than battling it out in the meat aisles at the supermarkets, why not have a week's supply delivered to your door.
There are a couple of good fish shops relatively local to us who seem to have plenty of product. Golborne Fisheries up on Golborne Road is open Tuesday to Saturday and has lovely fresh fish. The Notting Hill Fish Shop on Westbourne Grove is a bit more expensive but has some amazing produce (including incredible fresh tuna) and does home delivery. They are also selling/delivering breads from Hedone, fruit and veg from Natoora, meat by HG Walter, and sushi from Yashin. Marylebone’s Fishworks is also doing home delivery of fresh fish.
There are several specialist companies who will home deliver fresh fish. Several seem to be cutting back their services but one that still seems to be OK is Just Caught.
home delivered treats
If you would like to spoil your family this Easter, on this link you will find where you can get luxury easter eggs home delivered, from some of London’s top chocolatiers (Melt, Rococo, Paul A Young) and from the high end department stores like Fortnums and Liberty.
London’s best cheese shop Neals Yard Dairy are also doing home delivery of their fabulous cheese, with delivery free for orders over £30. Of course you can’t replicate the key Neals Yard experience of standing at the counter trying all the different cheese before you decide which ones you buy, but it’s the next best thing.
The English Cheesecake Company, owned by one of our Garden residents, offer their cakes through supermarkets, but also do a large part of their business supplying direct to restaurants, which obviously went away overnight when the restaurants closed. They hand make and deliver premium cheesecakes, cakes and cupcakes, and you can see their range at www.englishcheesecake.com. They deliver their cakes frozen to keep them fresh, which also means you can store them in the freezer until you want to use them.They are delivering for free, and if you use the discount code 'stayhome20' you get 20% off the marked price.
Press London, best known for their cleansing juices, is now doing home deliveries of a whole range of groceries, from Oat Milks and fresh bread to the less wholesome Easter Eggs and tequila!
You may have noticed that our local beer supplier Real Ale have closed their Formosa Street shop during this period, but if are pining for your craft beer, then you can buy their products online, again with home delivery. Go to their website www.realale.com and order there.
If the lockdown is taking it’s toll on your wine cellar, you can top it up by ordering from online wine merchant Drop. They have a curated selection of top quality wines, and do free same day delivery. You can’t ask for much more than that!
And though strictly speaking they’re not edible, if you want some fresh flowers to brighten your home / provide a classier backdrop for your video conferences, Floom is an online marketplace for independent florists, many of whom are still doing next day delivery.
specialty foods
Our area is home to a diverse community, and so there are specialty food shops serving many nationalities. But they are also well stocked with staples, such as pasta, tinned vegetables and epic bags of rice. Some of the best are:
Tawana on Chepstow Road, near the corner of Westbourne Grove, has a fantastic selection of products from all over Asia. If you’re cooking Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese you will find all that you need here. But they also surprised us the other day, when we hd looked in about 10 shops for eggs we finally found some here!
Garcia on Portobello Road has been serving the Spanish community for years, an despite the problems in Spain is very well stocked with Spanish and Italian hams and cheeses, world class oils and vinegars and other great Spanish products.
There is also an amazing new huge Italian deli on Westbourne Grove called Prezzemolo and Vitale. They are a London offshoot of a chain of delis in Sicily, and the range and quality of produce has to be seen to be believed - pastas, meats and cheeses. if you go midweek you should be able to avoid the queues.
cooking
Now you have all this great food, how are you going to cook it? You could start by getting to know your cookbooks better through a great website called Eat Your Books that has indexed most of the world’s cookbooks. You subscribe (it costs $3.00 per month or $30 per year), search for and tick all the cookbooks you have, and then they are added to your 'Bookshelf'. It's worth adding some blog and newspaper supplements as well (e.g Guardian Cook) as that also gives you access to the thousands of recipes available online. Then enter a few ingredients you have available and it gives you a listing of recipes from your cookbooks and online that feature those ingredients. Genius
For those that can’t get out to the shops for fresh food the Guardian has posted 10 great recipes you can make using store-cupboard ingredients.
Jamie Oliver has done a fast turnaround TV show for Channel 4 called ‘Keep Cooking and Carry On’. It’s quick and easy recipes that are not only delicious but use easy to get ingredients, and are flexible enough to swap ingredients in and out depending on what’s available. You can find videos of all the recipes here.
restaurants doing take-away and home delivery
While some of our locals have closed for the duration of the crisis, others remain open to do take-away and home delivery.
For Pizza and Italian food, The Red Pepper is closed, but Le Cochonnet on Lauderdale Road and Da Daniela on Shirland Road are both doing takeaway.
Also on Lauderdale Road, Japanese restaurant Murasaki is open for takeaway or delivery through Deliveroo.
Up at Elgin Avenue, Thai Rice remains open for take-away but not delivery. The Banana Tree is also doing take-away, or delivery via Deliveroo.
For something a little more upmarket, highly regarded Notting Hill restaurant Orasay is doing a takeaway menu, which can be picked up or home delivered. Perfect for a date night!
The following links will tell you which restaurants are still delivering to Maida Vale via Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats.
Eater website and the Clerkenwell Boy Instagram site also have lists of restaurants in Central and West London that are soldiering on doing take-away and deliveries during the lockdown.