Shop
YIELD N16
This Newington Green wine bar sells only natural, biodynamic and organic vino – handpicking bottles from small producers across the world. They match their selection of raw, honest wine with meats, cheese and bread from artisanal producers including Cobble Lane Cured, Neal’s Yard Dairy and E5 Bakehouse. Now that’s one hell of a charcuterie board.
NEWINGTON GREEN FRUIT & VEG
If you’re in Stokey and you need fruit & veg, this shop is the place to go because both the variety and the quality are on point. Think British staples sitting alongside exotic fruits from all over the world. And this place is cheap, like seriously cheap, so forget paying those crazy supermarket prices for some juicy toms.
WEIGH AND PAY
Weigh and Pay is the first zero-waste shop in Brixton Village, selling organic and plant-based whole, household goods and cosmetics. The shop is stocking products from local businesses like natural deodorant maker Elsa’s Organic and skincare company Suneeta London.
REFILL @ THE GRANGE
This Grange Park refill store has all the dried foods, herbs, spices, oils, tea and coffee you’d expect, as well as household cleaning products, toiletries and even plastic-free pet care goodies. If you haven’t got time to browse in store, they run a click & collect service too.
SWOP
SWOP, aka Shop WithOut Packaging, was set up by Jess and Claire after they became fed up with the amount of plastic litter they kept seeing. Everything in the shop is veggie or vegan and they aim to stock as much Fairtrade, organic and local produce as possible.
The Source Bulk Foods, which has branches in Battersea, Richmond, Crouch End and Chiswick, stocks over 450 bulk foods so you really are spoilt for choice. If you can’t head in-store to shop you can also order online and have waste-free shopping delivered to your door.
JARR MARKET
Herne Hill’s Jarr Market is packed with packaging-free grains, pastas, nuts, condiments, coffee, tea, toiletries and cleaning supplies as well as reusable containers for you to use in the shop. Founder Jess prioritises suppliers with closed-loop systems and she pays extra to have everything properly recycled by First Mile.
FAIR-WELL
If you’re in North London but can’t get out to a zero-waste shop, let it come to you instead. Fair-Well is a mobile refill service that takes zero-waste products to the people on converted milk float Charlie. They sell Fair Trade and organic dried goods, BioD cleaning products and Faith in Nature toiletries. To shop, you just book Charlie (make sure you’re in the catchment area) and have your containers at the ready.
BYO NUNHEAD
Plastic-free refill shop BYO in Nunhead has expanded into BYO Household and BYO Grocery. The household side stocks sustainable home, bath and beauty products from brands like Who Gives a Crap, Organicup, Fill, Eco Leaf, Faith in Nature, Wild Sage and Suneeta Cosmetics. There’s a large pantry selection on the grocery side as well as frozen goods, nut butter machines and London’s first plant-based milk machine from Minor Figures.
SHOP CUVÈE
Top Cuvèe absolutely bossed the first UK lockdown in 2020 by launching their own store Shop Cuvèe whilst the restaurant was shut. What first began as a takeaway operation selling store cupboard goods, natural wines and bottled cocktails soon expanded into local delivery via bike and then on to nationwide postal delivery. The demand for bottles didn’t go away so co-founders Brodie Meah and Max Venning turned Shop Cuvèe into its own bricks-and-mortar site, just 100 yards up on Blackstock Road. As well as being stocked with hundreds of bottles of natural wine, there’s also cheese, charcuterie and pantry staples for sale.
CANADA PLACE
If you’re looking to pick up some new threads, Canada Place shopping mall is the one as it’s home to fashion retailers like Mango, The Kooples and Levis. In between hitting the shops you can also squeeze in beauty appointments at Blink Brow Bar and refuel with sweet treats at Badiani Gelato.
JUBILEE PLACE
There’s something for everyone at this underground shopping mall – you can pick up activewear from Lululemon, glasses from Ollie Quinn, jewellery from Monica Vinader, and you can even work up a sweat at wellness studio, Awakn. Once you’ve built up an appetite, you can grab a bite to eat from the likes of Bird and Ahi Poke at indoor food market, Wharf Kitchen.
FUNK
Not content with having a cheese bar, a cheese conveyor belt restaurant and a cheese barge, the Cheese Bar team has opened Funk, a cheese shop and bottle shop on Columbia Road. You’d better brie-lieve it. It’s stocked with the best of British cheese, like Tunworth, Quickes Mature Cheddar, Baron Bigod and Village Maid cheese alongside Crown & Queue charcuterie, Rosebud Preserves, Miller’s Damsel Crackers, Kernel Brewery beers and low-intervention wines.
BUCHANAN'S CHEESEMONGER
Rhuaridh Buchanan passed up the chance to work at Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York, choosing to train as an affineur with historic British cheesemonger Paxton & Whitfield instead. If that means anything to you, you’ll know it’s a big deal. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, well, it’s a big deal. Keller’s loss is our gain, as we’ve got Buchanan’s Cheesemonger cheese shop here, the place to purchase fine cheeses and other dairy items, as well as eggs, freshly sliced charcuterie, bread from Gail’s Bakery and fresh fruit and veg from Natoora. The offering changes daily according to what’s ripe and at its best in the shop’s maturing rooms.
JUMI
In a landscape of fancy French-focused cheese shops, head to Jumi in Newington Green for a Swiss selection. The family behind it have five generations of experience in making cheese, so they seriously know what they’re doing, with a focus on quality all the way from the milking of the cows to the delivery of the produce to customers. Emmental is the name you’ll probably know here – derived from the Emmental Valley in Switzerland, home to acres of green pasture and lots and lots and lots of cows. A name you might not know, though, is blue brain cheese, which is one of the shop’s specialities. Don’t panic! No brains were harmed in the making of this cheese: it’s a reference to the blue mould that grows on this particular variety, which ends up looking a bit like, yup, a brain. And guess what? It’s delicious.
PAXTON AND WHITFIELD
If you like cheese, Paxton & Whitfield is the name to know. The shop on Jermyn Street goes all the way back to 1797, but even that stems from a market stall set up in 1742. That’s 278 years of cheese mongering experience, and an absolutely mountain of cheese that’s passed through this shop’s doors. It even holds two Royal Warrants, one from the Prince of Wales and one from Her Maj herself. If it’s good enough for royalty, it’s good enough for us. Pop in for English and French cheeses and anything and everything you could imagine to accompany them, from the company’s absolutely banging chutneys and pickles to every kind of cracker under the sun. And your choice of cracker is almost as important as the cheese, you know.
LA FAUXMAGERIE
Hold the phone. A cheese shop that doesn’t sell cheese? Well, it does – but not as you know it, because La Fauxmagerie is the world’s first vegan cheese shop. And these aren’t your average vegan cheeses, because these guys are on a mission to make sure that those following a plant-based diet don’t have to compromise on flavour or quality. It’s an incredible worthy mission, and one we can totally get on board with. The array of cheeses covers all bases, whether you’re after something for grating, for melting, to eat on its own, and there’s a range of vegan cured ‘meat’ and ‘fish’, too – think pastramheat (vegan pastrami), salamino (vegan salami) and even Faux Lox. What’s more, the shop tries to minimise plastic usage too, using plastic-free recyclable parchment paper and kraft paper tape to wrap the cheeses.
LONDON CHEESEMONGERS
Flavour comes first at this one-off Chelsea cheese shop that sells 30 cheeses from its counter. That might seem like a small number in comparison to many of the other ‘mongers around, but it’s that way for a reason: the selection of cheeses on offer is tightly curated by a collection of people who seriously love what they do. The range changes according to availability and the season, making sure every single choice is a celebration of the work that goes into these artisanal food products. Most importantly, the guys that run it encourage tasting. Lots and lots of tasting. Don’t mind if we do.