East London Life

I took a ‘field trip’ to Spitalfields, in Tower Hamlets this weekend, to look around, and to visit the market there for the first time. I had been meaning to do so since first arriving in London, but for one reason or another I had not, until this weekend, had the right combination of opportunity and purpose to do so.

Coming from the Liverpool Street tube station, I turned right onto Brushfield Street and was confronted (at the other end) with Christ Church and its famous Hawksmoor spire. Built between 1714 and 1729, the church’s beauty and lofty spire were designed to impress upon the locals the heavenly might of Anglicanism. Perfectly framed by the street, Christ Church utterly dominates the scene, as it once did for all of Spitalfields.

My first stop was Verde’s, a small shop owned by author Jeanette Winterson, who spends some of her time living above it. It is tiny, and I mean tiny. There is barely room for a couple of shoppers, though there is a table to sit at, which was occupied. Regardless of its size, it is a cute shop in a nice old building, saved from “improving” redevelopment by Jeanette.

My next stop was the market itself. I wandered around a bit outside, taking in the wide variety of shops and eateries that ring the Old Market itself. However, as I was arriving around lunchtime, I found myself hungry, and somehow standing in front of the largest barbecue smoker I have seen outside of the South Carolina State Fair, and a secret location in Eastern North Carolina that I will never divulge, even under pain of transportation to Guantanamo Bay…

The smoker belonged to the Arkansas Cafe & Bubba’s Pit BBQ, a little slice of Southern heaven smack dab in the middle of London. Cognitive dissonance all aflurry in my brain, I made my way inside for the surrela experience of eating smoked chicken and pulled pork barbecue (Eastern Style - vinegar only) in a Victorian market in London, surrounded by City types vainly trying to figure out how to eat bbq ribs with knife and fork.

While I was not able, even here in this outpost of Dixieland, to secure a biscuit (The English have no mental capacity to understand the concept of a savoury scone, so to try to sell them a biscuit would be futile), I was able to enjoy both an Anchor Steam and a Liberty Ale, two American items I had been sorely missing since the move.
After lunch, I wandered around the market, and further into Spitalfields, but that will have to wait for another post. Now I have to get back to Bubba’s and see if I can convince him to cook me up a “mess o’ ribs”…