Eat Drink Talk are proud to use only the best quality ingredients in all our classes. We believe that the basis of delicious and flavourful food is ingredients of the highest quality and are delighted to use products and raw ingredients from the following growers, producers and suppliers in our classes.
MEAT
The Natural Kitchen
77/78 Marylebone High St
W1U 5JX
www.thenaturalkitchen.com
When three of my favourite butchers from Borough Market left to head up the meat counter at the Natural Kitchen in Marylebone, I made sure to follow. Run by Andy and Matt from Farmer Sharp and Paul from the Ginger Pig, the butcher counter inside the Natural Kitchen has one of best meat selections I’ve seen in London.
Focusing on hormone-free, naturally reared rare breeds from small farms across Southern England, the quality and level of skill here puts many London butchers with their mushy, soggy meat displays to utter shame. Regular customers can even bring their knives in for a free sharpening service!
Sillfield Farm
Borough Market
www.sillfield.co.uk/
A trip to Borough on a Saturday wouldn’t be complete without a stop to see Eric, Claudio and Peter wearing their bowler hats and bright red wooly socks. Their bacon and sausages are the best we’ve tried and they have recently started making their own fresh chorizo which went down a storm in a recent brunch class.
Wyndham House Poultry
Borough Market
We buy our chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, quail, eggs and chicken carcasses for making stocks here. During game season we often buy pheasants and partridges here. They also have a great selection of dried pasta.
Allen & Co
117 Mount St
W1K 3LA
Walking into this Mayfair-based butcher shop with its tiled walls and enormous wooden chopping blocks is like stepping back in time. They have an excellent selection of meat and game and the butchers here will tirelessly trim and prepare your game to order. We bought some venison and hare here and enjoyed watching the butchers asking all the customers to stand back to avoid being splattered while they jointed the hare for us.
DAIRY, CHEESE AND BUTTER
Neal’s Yard Dairy
Borough Market
nealsyarddairy.co.uk
We also buy all our milk, cream, butter and yoghurt here. Their thick guernsey cream is the secret to the rich and creamy ice cream we serve in class!
KäseSwiss
Borough Market
www.kaseswiss.co.uk
This little cheese stall at Borough is such a gem! They carry only farmhouse cheeses from Switzerland and their cheeses are simply incredible. We come here to buy aged Gruyere and our favourite cheese of all time: Sbrinz, which has previously been unavailable in the UK. The staff here are extremely friendly and love to hear about the recipes their customers will be making with their purchases.
Cheeses
13 Fortis Green Road
N10 3HP
Every neighbourhood needs a shop like Cheeses in Muswell Hill. Saskia, one of the owners, is incredibly friendly and knowledgeable about cheese and will let you sample away to your heart’s content. They also have some lovely slate cheeseboards and knives as well as a range of chutneys and oils.
La Fromagerie
2-4 Moxon Street
W1U 4EW
www.lafromagerie.co.uk
When we need a specialised ingredient like crystallised rose petals or saffron syrup, La Fromagerie is where we come to get it. This wonderful shop is such a treasure trove of carefully selected ingredients that it’s easy to forget that this is also one of the best cheese shops in London!
FISH AND SEAFOOD
Applebee’s
Borough Market
A single glance at the fish on display at Applebee’s and you immediately know that this is a serious place for top-quality fish. Applebee’s have excellent connections with day-boat fisherman which ensures that they have some of the freshest, wild and line-caught fish in the country. The quality of the fish butchering behind the counter is far superior to what you see in many fishmongers and watching these men at work scaling and filleting is truly impressive.
James Knight of Mayfair
67 Notting Hill Gate
W11 3JS
www.james-knight.com
The quality and selection at James Knight has to be one of the finest in London. We get sushi-grade fish here for our Japanese classes as well as Demlane mussels and hand-picked crab meat. Everything is superbly handled and exceptionally fresh.
Keltic Seafare
www.kelticseafare.com
Located just outside of Inverness, Keltic have some of the finest seafood in Britain. We buy their diver-caught scallops and creel-caught lobsters which are packed live off the boats and sent by overnight train to us. We love opening the boxes to see their clacking scallops and feisty lobsters lovingly wrapped in a damp copy of the Highland Times.
Shellseekers
Borough Market
Darren, the owner of Shellseekers dives for scallops off the coast of Dorset and sells them out of his stall at Borough Market on Fridays and Saturdays. His scallops are always alive and will clamp down on your fingers as you fill a plastic bag with your selection for Darren to weigh. Darren often has other things like lobsters and Dover sole which he catches during his dives.
Good Harvest Fish Market
55 Shaftesbury Avenue
W1D 6LH
You can’t do much better than calling into this fishmonger in Chinatown where nearly everything for sale is either alive or extremely fresh. They have live crab, lobsters and scallops in the shell, a choice of sea and fresh water prawns, and a fish tank at the back of the shop with live carp and tilapia which they will fish out for you to take home.
FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
Secretts Farm
www.homegrowndirect.com
An organic farm based in Surrey which will pick and ship vegetables to you overnight. They sell beautiful salad greens, some unusual varieties of carrots, beetroot, and tomatoes as well as berries and soft fruit. They are always reading historical agricultural books to research varieties of vegetables they can plant that will suit UK climate and soil. £4.50 delivery charge. Also has a small stall at Borough Market.
Ted’s Veg
(07931 765 348) Operates stalls at Borough Market and a number of the London Farmer’s Markets .
Ted Dawson’s farm stall sells the kind of vegetables that we just love! We buy their knobbly carrots, beets with the greens attached, and their artichokes which are just picked from their farm in Lincolnshire. They also sell hen, duck and goose eggs. Buying from Ted’s veg feels like having our vegetable patch here in London.
Kingcup Farm
www.kingcupfarm.com
This has to be one of the most unique fruit and vegetable farms in the UK, and incredulously is right on our doorsteps! Located near Denham within the M25, Kingcup farm sell their produce either directly at the farm or via stalls at a number of the London Farmer’s Markets . In addition to more conventional fruit and vegetables they grow the most amazing range of herbs and salad greens we’ve seen anywhere including borage, dandelion, chickweed, fat hen and countless other gems.
Booths
Borough Market
Booth’s fruit and vegetables is a great source for specialty herbs and mushrooms that are difficult to find elsewhere. They have shiso leaves, Thai basil, curry leaves and other exotic foods and all at reasonable prices. Tony, the exceptionally kind white-haired owner, loves a challenge and will research unusual requests in his vegetable encyclopedia and try and source them. He is currently on the case for Meyer lemons and fresh wasabi for us!
WILD MUSHROOMS AND SPECIALIST FOODS
Forager
www.forager.org.uk
We can’t say enough great things about Forager, operated by Miles Irving who spends hours scrambling through woodland gathering wild mushrooms, and edible plants, spices and berries. Every time we use their ingredients in a class students are positively fascinated and want to learn more. They offer a mail-order service and can ship items to you in the post.
SPECIALIST DELIS
Brindisa
Shops in Borough Market and Exmouth Market in EC1.
www.brindisa.com
Located just around the corner from us, we often pop in to share stories, ingredients and new discoveries with the friendly staff at this fantastic Spanish deli. We use their Marcona almonds in all our baking, and source our chorizo, manchego cheese and any other Spanish ingredients here.
Gastronomica
Bedale Street, Borough Market
This wonderful and friendly Italian deli has it all. We seem to pop in at least twice a week to buy mascarpone, ricotta, guanciale and pancetta from them. They will happily let you sample things before buying.
SPICES
The Spice Route
Broadway Market
www.thespiceroute.co.uk
The owner of the Spice Route, Kate de Syllas is very knowledgeable about spices and happy to dispense with lots of good advice. Find her stall at Broadway Market on Saturdays, all EDT guests receive 15% off!
Seasoned Pioneers
www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk
We love this company! They hand-blend and dry roast an amazing selection of spices and exotic ingredients which you can order by post. We use their spices frequently in our Middle East, Turkish, and Persian Classes.
COFFEE
Monmouth Coffee
www.monmouthcoffee.co.uk
Coffee from Monmouth Coffee will ruin you for Starbucks (Yuck!) forever. We serve their dark roast Ethiopian Yirgacheffe in our brunch classes to help fuel our students on Sunday mornings. We also buy Pralus chocolate here for our Desserts for Chocoholics classes.
BEER
Utobeer
Borough Market
www.utobeer.co.uk
Whenever we need a specialty beer or ale, we come straight to Utobeer. Even amidst the crowds on a busy Saturday morning, they were happy to drop everything and spend 10 minutes painstakingly debating the most suitable beer for us to use in our ‘Braised Short Ribs Carbonnade’ recipe and wouldn’t let us walk away until they were satisfied. Richard, Eddie and the other friendly guys who work here know just about everything there is to know about beer and true addicts will be thrilled to learn that they’ve recently opened a tiny bar just around the corner called ‘The Rake’ which also does off-license sales to tide you over when the stall is closed during the week.
CHOCOLATE
Paul A. Young Fine Chocolates
33 Camden Passage
N1 8EA
www.payoung.net
There are simply no words to describe the incredible chocolates which friendly chocolatier Paul Young makes in his small shop each morning. The moment you walk into the shop and see the jars of sea salt caramel and bars of Amadei lining the shelves, it becomes clear that this man is very serious about his chocolate. We buy bars of Amadei and Valhrona here for use in our Desserts for Chocoholics classes.