The Markets of London: What to Eat, Stall by Stall, and When to Show Up

London's markets are its most democratic restaurants: a few pounds buys you cooking from half the world, eaten standing up in the weather like a proper Londoner. But a market differs from a restaurant in one crucial way — it is not there when you want it. Each one keeps its own calendar, and the most common way a visitor wastes a morning in this city is by choosing a market off a map instead of off a diary. Turn up at Columbia Road on a Tuesday and you find a quiet residential street. Turn up at Borough on a Monday and you find a locked gate.

So this is a guide organised by the week rather than by the postcode. Here is what to eat, where, and exactly when to show up.

Key facts

• Borough Market: typically Tuesday to Sunday, closed Mondays. Thursday is the sweet spot, for a reason most guides miss.
• Columbia Road Flower Market: Sunday mornings only, usually winding down in the early afternoon.
• Broadway Market: Saturday is the main event; a smaller Sunday market now runs alongside it.
• Maltby Street: both weekend days now, though Saturday is considerably the better one.
• Old Spitalfields and Camden trade every day, which makes them your rain plan and your Monday plan.
• Budget roughly GBP 25 to GBP 40 a head to graze properly at any of them.

Build the trip around the calendar, not the map

Two markets a day is the limit, and one done properly beats three done at a jog. Allow around ninety minutes to two hours for a food market: long enough to walk it once without buying anything, then go back for the three things you actually want. That first empty lap is the whole technique. Stalls are arranged to catch you at the entrance, and the thing you would have chosen is almost always further in.

The week, in shorthand. Sunday belongs to the East End: Columbia Road for flowers, Brick Lane for bagels and the Truman Brewery markets, Old Spitalfields to finish. Saturday belongs to two rival axes — Bermondsey south of the river, Broadway Market and Netil north of it — and you cannot do both well, so pick one. Thursday is the day to give to Borough, for reasons explained below. Monday is the dead day: Old Spitalfields and Camden trade through it, and almost nothing else does.

Distances are smaller than the tube map suggests. Columbia Road to Brick Lane is about a fifteen-minute walk. Brick Lane to Old Spitalfields is shorter still, under ten minutes at an easy pace. Spa Terminus to Maltby Street is roughly ten minutes on foot. Walk them. The bus and tube combinations for these hops take longer than your legs do.

Borough Market: come on a Thursday

Under the railway arches beside Southwark Cathedral, about two minutes from London Bridge station, Borough has traded in some form for centuries and to our mind is still the benchmark the others are measured against. It typically opens Tuesday to Friday from mid-morning until around five, Saturday from about nine, and Sunday from mid-morning until roughly four. Mondays it is shut. Hours shift at bank holidays and through December, when it usually trades seven days a week, so confirm on the market's own site before you commit a morning to it.

Conventional advice says come midweek to dodge the crowds. That advice is half right, and following it literally will cost you the best thing in the building. Kappacasein — Bill Oglethorpe's raclette and toasted cheese operation, which Borough Market's own trader listing describes as the stuff of market legend — now works from a shopfront at the Stoney Street end, and typically trades Thursday to Saturday only. Arrive on a Tuesday for a peaceful browse and the grill is cold. Thursday is the compromise that solves it: the raclette is on, and the crush is a fraction of Saturday's.

What to order, roughly in this sequence. Start with half a dozen oysters from Richard Haward's, a seventh-generation Essex oyster family who shuck to order on crushed ice; expect to pay somewhere around GBP 3 apiece. Then the Kappacasein raclette, scraped over new potatoes with cornichons and pickled onions, or the toastie of Montgomery's cheddar melted between sourdough — both were priced at about GBP 8 at the time of writing, and both are entirely defensible at eleven in the morning. Coffee from Monmouth, which has queued out of the door since long before queueing for coffee was a habit anyone had. A custard-filled doughnut from Bread Ahead to carry away.

Then stop eating and start shopping: Neal's Yard Dairy for British and Irish farmhouse cheese, Turnips for specialist produce, Bedales for wine. If you want to sit down afterwards, Padella hand-rolls pasta in the window and runs on a queue rather than bookings at the Borough room, so either join it or eat at an off hour.

What to skip: Saturday afternoon, which the market itself flags as its peak; the outer-edge stalls selling the paella and burgers you could eat in any European market square; and the temptation to make a full sit-down lunch of it. Borough is a grazing ground. Reckon on about GBP 25 to GBP 35 a head to do it properly, more if the cheese counter gets you.

Bermondsey, Saturday morning: where the traders themselves shop

About a ten-minute walk from Tower Bridge there is a market almost nobody finds on a first trip. Spa Terminus is a run of working railway arches along Druid Street and its neighbours, where a good number of the producers who supply Borough and half of London's restaurant kitchens actually make the food. They open to the public on Saturday mornings, generally from around half past eight or nine until the early afternoon, with some arches also trading on Fridays.

This is not street food and you should not arrive expecting a hot lunch. It is Kappacasein's dairy selling Bermondsey Hard Pressed and London Raclette by the wedge, Neal's Yard Dairy's maturing rooms, Monmouth's roastery, vegetables, biodynamic wine. You go for a bag to take home and a coffee drunk standing on concrete, and it is the most quietly impressive food in this guide. Come by ten; by early afternoon the shutters are coming down.

Then walk roughly ten minutes to the Ropewalk, which everybody calls Maltby Street Market. It began life as a Saturday market and is still described that way in most guides, but it now typically trades both weekend days — Saturdays from around ten until five, Sundays from late morning until about four — with Saturday the day every counter is open. St John Bakery bakes here, and its custard doughnuts and buttery eccles cakes are the reason to arrive hungry. Bar Tozino carves jamon under a curved brick arch built to look like an Andalusian bodega. African Volcano does peri-peri pulled pork from a Cape Town family recipe. Bad Brownie does exactly what its name promises.

One structural warning: Maltby Street is a narrow corridor, not a square, and it is genuinely unpleasant when full. Be there for a late breakfast around ten and gone by one, and it earns the detour. Reckon on about GBP 20 to GBP 30 a head with a drink.

East London, Saturday: Broadway Market and Netil

North of the river the same Saturday belongs to Hackney. Broadway Market runs from London Fields down towards Regent's Canal and typically trades from around nine until five, with something in the region of 150 stalls: fresh produce, sourdough, natural wine, oysters, Persian and Japanese street food, vintage clothes and records. A newer Sunday market now runs alongside it, smaller and calmer, usually from late morning until the late afternoon. The schoolyard overspill at the London Fields end is where the density of food stalls is highest and the crush is lowest, and most visitors never walk far enough up the street to find it.

About five minutes away, Netil Market is a small yard of independent traders open on Saturdays, generally from around ten until five, with a fraction of Broadway's crowd and a rooftop bar above it in the warmer months.

The move here is not to eat standing in the street. Buy a picnic as you walk the market — bread, cheese, something hot, a bottle — then carry it into London Fields and sit on the grass with everyone else, which is what the market is actually for. Arrive before noon; by one the street is shoulder to shoulder and the good bread has gone. Getting there: London Fields or Cambridge Heath on the Overground, or Bethnal Green on the Central line and about a ten-minute walk.

One warning. This is the market that collapses in bad weather. It is an open street with no cover, and in January rain it is thin, cold and half-shuttered. Save it for a dry day.

East London, Sunday: Columbia Road through to Spitalfields

Our favourite morning in this guide, and it is a walk rather than a market. Start at Columbia Road, where a narrow Victorian street disappears under cut flowers every Sunday, typically from around eight in the morning until roughly two or three in the afternoon. The eating here is the supporting act — coffee, pastries and small cafes along the row, and the side alley of Ezra Street for a quieter version of the same thing — but the trading itself is the spectacle. Go by nine if you want to move freely and hear the traders shouting prices; go after one if you want plants at half price and do not mind the scrum. The middle of the morning is the worst of both.

Walk about fifteen minutes south to Brick Lane. The order here is the salt beef beigel — hot, mustard-slicked, defiantly untidy — from one of the two bakeries near the north end of the lane, of which Beigel Bake has traded around the clock since the 1970s and is open every hour of every day. Expect to pay somewhere around GBP 7 to GBP 8 for the salt beef; the plain beigels cost small change. The Old Truman Brewery runs several markets across the same weekend, including the Sunday Upmarket for street food and clothing, the Backyard Market for makers, a vintage market in the basement and food trucks in Ely's Yard, typically from mid-morning until around five on Sundays and from late morning to early evening on Saturdays.

Finish about ten minutes further on at Old Spitalfields, which trades every day and is therefore the fallback when any other plan collapses. Its food hall generally serves from late morning into the evening, with Sri Lankan kothu roti and hand-pulled Chinese noodles among the standouts. Thursday is its antiques day, Saturdays run to a theme that changes weekly, and a record fair usually takes over the square on the first Friday of the month.

What to skip on this route: the stretch of Brick Lane curry houses where staff step into the street to negotiate a price with you. There is excellent Bangladeshi and Pakistani cooking in this part of London. It is not, in our experience, the table you get talked into from the pavement.

Camden and Portobello: the famous ones, honestly assessed

Both appear on every list and neither is where a Londoner goes to eat. That does not make them a mistake; it makes them a question of expectation.

Camden Market trades every day, generally opening around ten with most units closing about six and the food running later. The Hawley Wharf halls and the North Yard restaurants keep going well into the evening. The global lineup is genuinely broad and genuinely decent. The crowd on a summer Saturday is the problem. Come on a weekday, eat, then walk the Regent's Canal towpath east towards King's Cross, and you have had the good version of Camden.

Portobello Road in Notting Hill is the opposite shape: it peaks hard on Saturday, the one day all its sections trade at once, with antiques at the southern end, then fruit and vegetables, then clothing and street food further north. Friday is the connoisseur's day, noticeably quieter with most sections still running. Friday is also when Golborne Road at the top end is busiest, and its North African and Caribbean stalls are better eating than most of Portobello proper. The produce stalls trade Monday to Saturday; on Sunday the street is effectively closed.

When in the year it works, and when it does not

May to early July and September to October are the windows. The weather holds, the produce is worth looking at, and the outdoor markets — Broadway, Columbia Road, Portobello — are doing what they exist to do.

High summer is fine but thins out: London traders take August holidays, and closures of a fortnight or more are common. Kappacasein, for instance, shut for a couple of weeks in the second half of August this year. Check before you build a day around a single stall.

November and December are better than their reputation. Borough usually extends to seven days a week through December, Columbia Road turns into a wreath market in the weeks before Christmas, and the covered markets — Borough, Old Spitalfields, the Bermondsey arches, Camden's halls — are warm and lit while the streets are not.

January and February are the months to be honest about. An open street market in cold rain has no cover, no atmosphere and half its traders. If your trip falls then, weight it towards the arches and the halls, and treat Broadway Market and Columbia Road as a bonus if the forecast is kind.

Bank holiday weekends move everything. Hours shift, some markets add a Monday, others close outright. Check each market's own site the week before you go, not the week after you have planned.

What it costs, and how to actually work a stall

Budget roughly GBP 25 to GBP 40 a head to eat well across a morning at any of these, which buys four or five things rather than a meal. Individual plates typically run from about GBP 6 for a skewer or a bagel up to around GBP 12 to GBP 15 for a substantial street-food main. Cheese, charcuterie and wine to take home are where the bill escapes; Borough and Spa Terminus can empty a wallet very quietly.

Nearly everything takes contactless now, but a handful of the oldest traders remain cash-preferred, so carry around twenty pounds in notes. Take a tote, because you will buy cheese you did not plan on. And eat in halves: two people sharing one portion each of four things is the only way to get through a market without surrendering after two stalls.

The discipline that matters most is the simplest. Go hungry, walk the whole thing once before you buy anything, and never eat within the first twenty metres or so of an entrance.

Tip: Let the diary choose your market, not the map. Columbia Road and Brick Lane own Sunday. Broadway, Netil, Maltby Street and Spa Terminus own Saturday. Borough belongs to Thursday, when the raclette grill is lit and the aisles are still walkable. Old Spitalfields and Camden cover everything else, including Monday and the rain.