Portabello Market

After our trip to Borough Market last weekend, we thought we'd keep the trend up and go to Portabello. In fairness, it was Monika who dragged me down there so she could look at antiques and to buy a side table for the lounge. Personally, it's not really my type of market, full of people selling the type of crap I'm often desperately trying to get rid of. Thankfully we spent more time at the food section, found a nice Italian fish restaurant and I avoided having to carry a side table home.








Here's a great stand serving loads of different types of olives and tapenades:

Some cracking paella that I was really tempted by:

Fish and chips in a different way:

Here's the butchers where I bought a few poussin to cook - really good value at £1.50 each. I'll post another entry later this week with my version of Michel Roux's Poussin with Scented Lemongrass and Ginger.

A few other places that caught the eye:

I decided to go for the piri-piri chicken with grilled haloumi and chorizo on a bed of patatas bravas. Served with spicy mayo. It might not look very appetising but I can assure you that it was every bit as delicious as it sounds. Not exactly ideal preparation for the 10km assault course around Battersea Power Station that I have to do in little over a month but at least my tastebuds had a good work-out!

 Don't miss Blenheim Crescent, a road off Portabello Road which has a fantastic little spice shop where they blend and mix their own spices on site. It boasts more than 2,500 products, and apparently is popular with celebrity chefs. Well, it's now also popular with The Overnight Chef.

Blenheim Crescent also has this great cookbook store and they were serving a delicious soup of Sausage, Kidney bean and Red Chili outside, which was a nice touch:

We also stumbled upon this great little Italian fish restaurant with very cool interiors:

Finally, I'll leave you with the enduring image of a man in a dinner jacket playing a flaming tuba. Yes, those are real flames.