Daylesford Organic

On Monday we went shopping on Portobello Road, which is in the posh Notting Hill section of London. In the course of our travels we also walked by the private garden where Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant connected in Notting Hill, which for a while was one of my wife's favorite movies.

Portobello Road is littered with little antique shops, pubs, restaurants, and stalls which offer a wide variety of foods and goods. In fact, Portobello Road is exactly the sort of eclectic and funky little area that Harvard Square was the first time I went there, which was about 1972 or 1973; i.e. long before the 90210 (the original series on Fox, with Heather Locklear) generation got to Cambridge and whined until there was a Gap, an HMV, and a Pizzeria Uno.

Anyway, while the streets which run off of Portobello Road are mostly residential (beautiful townhouses and upscale apartment buildings), there are a few streets with shops, including Westbourne Grove, where Daylesford Organic is located. DO is a part of a small chain of organic grocery shops/caffes in and around London which are built around the produce and meat an organic farm in Daylesford, Gloucestershire produces.

It's hard not to like the concept of organic food, even if you aren't a tree-hugger. Who wouldn't want fresher food with less chemicals? That said, organic food (at least in the US) tends to be a lot more expensive. Also, because people have different ideas about what it means to be "organic," and because some people are just unscrupulous, you often find that one person's "organic" food is another person's chemical laden cr*p.

Anyway, for lunch I had a peach yogurt drink with turkey and lentil curry with brown rice. My lunch was marked as a "detox" special and while I don't know about that, I can tell you that the curry and rice were very good. As you would hope for from organic food, there was a lot of bold color and flavor. The yogurt drink was OK, but it was a little overly sweet and a tad too thick.

My wife had a ginger beer (which isn't beer), which should have been billed as GINGER beer, because of the powerful ginger flavor. It isn't a a flavor most people are used to in that strength and concentration, so it was different and interesting, though I don't know how many times I'd want to have it.

For lunch, my wife had salmon with sprouted broccoli pasta bake. The pasta bake was actually a deconstructed component; i.e. it had all the components of pasta, but it wasn't made. It was interesting and tasty. The salmon was also excellent.

Total tab, including tip, was just under 30 pounds, so about $45-50. Once again, this is pricey by normal HFG standards, but for an upscale market in London, not bad at all.

DO was about you'd expect from an upscale market, right down to hip, multicultural, 20-something staff, the British version of ladies who lunch, and an entire battery of pretty young housewives who go to lunch with their baby carriages ("prams" in British) in their gym clothes and pearls. It did, however, serve a darn good lunch, so I am glad we went.

Here is the link to Daylesford's website, which has information on the farm and the various shops it operates -http://www.daylesfordorganic.com/engine/shop/index.html