A few months ago there was sudden activity on the
high street near my north London flat. Two huge neon
lights appeared in a shop window with no name above
the door. Very avant-garde, I thought — might this be a
pop-up exhibition of work by the late fluorescent artist
Dan Flavin? Or a new underground club, perhaps,
so exclusive that it was nameless, only accessible if you
knew the password? The queues once it opened were
certainly long enough. But this was Saturday morning,
not Friday night: my new neighbour is a butcher (called
Stella’s, if you look closely enough). The neons, once lit,
are line-drawn carcasses in Instagrammable pink and
yellow, and on Instagram you can learn the provenance
of the meat, all sourced from small herds: one week
free-range pork belly from Suffolk, the next quails
from the Cotswolds.
Across London in Holland Park, a colleague watched
as another neon sign was hung, this one the bright
pink lettering of a name: Supermarket of Dreams. This
particular store began on a much smaller scale during
lockdown, as a way for hot London restaurants to
generate income by selling meal kits. Now the owner,
Chris D’Sylva, has scaled it up, while still keeping the
brands that he stocks local, the produce fresh and
different from what you’ll find elsewhere.
But as the neon signs give away, these are more than
just places to pick up a pint of milk: they’re our new
nightclubs, our dens of hedonism. Filling a basket with
local produce might just be the millennial dream.
So is the era of the “big shop” over? It certainly is for
me and my friends. I’m 34, by which age my parents
had a mortgage and two small children to feed. I live
alone and don’t have a car to drive to the supermarket
once a week, or a family to feed that requires a regular
Tesco delivery. Instead I pick up something most days
— some eggs here, a loaf of bread there, a bag
of whatever fruit smells the best at the grocer — on
the way from meetings or on a lunchtime walk, and the
more niche and artisanal the better.
How posh is
your food shop?
Neon signs, cult ingredients
and Instagrammable
displays – the new wave of
hip grocery stores have
become the hottest place for
millennials to hang out, says
Charlie Gowans-Eglinton
Charlie Gowans-Eglinton at
Gladwell’s deli in Camberwell,
southeast LondonPhotograph Grey Hutton18 • The Sunday Times Style