Muslim Butchers, then Baker and Spice

Leaving Cirencester in the mid 90's organic food was still very much in the domain of hippy and the wealthy, or most often both and jobs in the sector were thin on the ground. I found myself driving a white van for a small company supplying organic meat and game around London and out of a small West Kensington Halal butcher. It was an interesting experience, 24, female, dealing with Smithfield dealers, negotiating HPC in a van and lugging carcasses about probably wasn't what my parents (or I) had in mind having spent a small fortune educating me.. but it was an education of its own. I learnt how to smoke a hubble bubble in the smoky basement of the shop, learned about Ramadan and tempted by the amazing smells from the subterranean kitchen, ate with the extended family in the evenings.  I even found myself delivering suckling pigs, concealed in blankets to vast Edgeware apartments waved through to kitchens by kohl eyed ladies dripping in diamonds,  It was certainly a different world from Henley! 

Baker & Spice

On a walk along Walton Street I spied a shop, a jewel of a shop, walls of sunset orange, the frontage deep blue, empty bread racks and piles of brightly coloured plates balanced on flowerpots in the window. Baker and Spice across the window.

My days in the meat business were over! I worked with Karen and Yael for a year as they opened their first shop and the word spread.  I loved every minute of it. colleagues, customers, the village feeling of the shop and so many famous names popping in on a Sunday morning in their dressing gowns and slippers for their croissants. It was a very special place and hid a fabulous secret in the basement. The shop was over the last working gas-fired brick ovens in London and the bread that came out of them, crisp, fragrant and alive with internal crackling and popping was quite delicious. But all good things must come to and end and I had done my time in London, and it just wasn't for me.