Food Market Forces People Together

The food on display at Queen’s Market in Upton Park is as diverse as the population in this part of East London, reports Beatrice Groth.

From African yams and Caribbean sweet potatoes to Pakistani pawpaw and Norwegian sun-dried stock fish, there is an enormous range of food for sale at Queen’s Market in Upton Park. Halal meat stores are also bursting with a wide variety of meats, though not pork, of course – for religious reasons! But regardless of religious beliefs everyone I meet welcomes me with open arms.

As well as the larger shops, there are rows of open stalls echoing with the loud chorus of people advertising their wares. But in spite of the differences in culture, tradition and religion represented here, both natives and non-native East Londoners socialise with ease and comfort, buying and selling from one another cheerfully.

‘East London is the best place to live,’ one woman tells me. Surveying the scene, it reminds of the place which founding father of journalism Joseph Addison said he loved more than anywhere else in London. Writing of the Royal Exchange – smarter than Queen’s Market, but a market nontheless, Addison confessed ‘it gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure, gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth.’

Surely he would have felt at home in today’s Upton Park.

Beatrice Groth is Rising East‘s Communities Editor.

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