Nowadays Covent Garden is full of tiny boutique shops, expensive restaurants, street theatre and seething crowds, but it wasn’t always like this: once it was full of huge fresh food market stalls. And, er, seething crowds, admittedly. For the whole of August, Covent Garden is stepping back into the past with a late-night Thursday food market.
(Picture by Antonio Martinez.)
Between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. every Thursday during August, Covent Garden will be “going back to its roots”, though it won’t all be quite the way it was in the olden days: it seems unlikely, for example, that the original Covent Garden market would have included decorative hay bales or the “hottest hoe-down group this side of Texas” to entertain visitors. And although it’ll be easy for shoppers to pick something up on their way back from work, they’ll also be able to settle in for the evening if they choose; again, not quite your typical food market.
The traders will be selling beef from rare and native breeds of cow, well-hung meats from Yorkshire and Leicestershire, home-made sausages, and even oysters from Cornwall. Vegetarians need not despair, either: there’s artisan bread, mushroom sandwiches, a specialist cheesemonger and proper white balsamic vinegar from Italy.
Once you’ve picked up some food to take home and cook over the weekend, there’s fudge, liquorice, homemade ice-cream, and plenty of cafe-like stalls (including “the country’s first mobile chocolate bar”). This means there’ll be plenty of opportunity to pick up some coffee and cakes or snacks, then sit down to watch the bustle move past you.
There’ll also be all the usual Covent Garden goings-on: the shops will stay open until ten, the buskers will be out and about, the lanterns will glow, the crowds will flow. The range of food stalls might not be quite up to the standard of some of the farmers markets in the area, or Borough Market itself, but the timing is wonderful and the location charming.
Covent Garden Night Market: Covent Garden Market. Thursdays in August, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Entry free (though most of the food will be expensive).
