The Review - FOOD AND DRINK - THE MARKET PLACE Published: 6 March 2008
Paradise organic and health food shop has been in Kentish Town Road for 19 years
Being small is not always beautiful
The good, the bad and the ugly – how the independent high street shops are managing business
PETER Marks has been baking bread and cakes at the Alexis Bakery (272 West End Lane, NW6), since the 1980s.
He took over from his father, who founded the business in 1958. As a child, Peter regularly visited the shop. It was fated he should become a baker – it was in the blood.
His bakery has survived by adapting to a changing market. Once, freshly baked loaves and Viennese cakes were the mainstay. Currently it is the lunchtime trade in sandwiches and pies – both of which he makes and bakes on the premises – that keep the business afloat.
Fortunately, for those who love well-made cakes and pastries, he still hones his cake-baking skills, producing a small range of well-made cream cakes and pastries.
The chocolate eclairs are particularly good.
Only a few doors away, within bun-fighting distance from the Alexis Bakery, is another long-established baking outfit: Roni’s Bagels (250 West End Lane, NW6), run by Israeli Roni Avital. Despite the close proximity, the two shops maintain a friendly, neighbourly relationship.
Like Peter at Alexis, Roni has specialised. Well-made bagels (up to 18,000 a week are sold) equal the best that Brick Lane or Golders Green can offer.
These, along with excellent Jewish pastries and keenly priced French gateaux – all made with natural ingredients – have ensured a large and loyal, mostly local, customer base.
Fishmongers
Giant supermarkets trading quality for price, or exclusive establishments charging excessive prices – this is London’s fish retailers.
There may be some cowboys, but fortunately there are also a few Lone Rangers who manage to supply quality produce at a reasonable price.
Steve Hatt (88-90 Essex Road, N1) is one of the best. His prices are on a par with the supermarkets, but the quality of the produce is definitely exclusive.
Steve, a fifth-generation Islington fishmonger, runs the most famous fish shop in London.
The internet is flooded with its praises, with one contributor exclaiming that Steve’s fish shop makes the Waitrose fish counter seem like Captain BirdsEye.
Health foods
ALAS, things are not so rosy at Paradise Foods, 164 Kentish Town Road, NW5. When Cypriots Charlie and Maria Stasi started their organic health food shop 19 years ago they were pioneers.
For a while, they were the only independent food shop in the area. Charlie reckons there are currently 14.
One of them – a very sophisticated set-up – opened 15 months ago, and since then Charlie and Maria’s business has declined.
Charlie is gobsmacked. He and Maria worked hard to build a receptive customer base.
Charlie is extremely amiable: he chats, he advises and will go out of his way to find and order an item. He believed he had a special relationship with his customers – he considered them his friends and neighbours. “With the exception of alcohol and a couple of other items, other shops sell the same range of products we do and at the same prices,” he told me last Saturday. “I think many of my regulars were enticed by the bright lights and are now too embarrassed to return.”
Local resident and loyal Paradise Foods customer Judy Love said: “Charlie and Maria have given the local community excellent service for many years. “I believe they should be supported by those of us who value small local shops that offer personal, hands-on service.”
Should the shopkeeper and the customer be friends or is it a purely commercial relationship built on mutual self-interest? Join the debate at www.thecnj.co.uk and click on Food and Drink. DON RYAN
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