A Chance
Encounter at
Borough Market

I first heard about London’s Borough Market while halfway up Mount Kinabalu in Borneo… as you do. Food markets have always been my happy place, so when I returned to London, I made a beeline for Borough, grabbing a coffee and perching on a sunny corner of Stoney Street to watch the traders set up their stalls and soak in the energy.

Borough Market in the late ‘90s wasn’t the bustling food mecca it is today, but it had an undeniable energy—a place where passionate artisans, cheesemongers, bakers, butchers, and green grocers were coming together to create something special. The smells, the sounds, the patter of traders calling out their wares—it all felt raw, real, and alive.

One trader, in particular, stood out that first morning—Jad, a warm and charismatic Jordanian, was at the centre of the action, effortlessly charming passersby, enticing them with fragrant za’atar, velvety hummus, smoky baba ghanoush and citrusy, tabbouleh. His stall—a simple eight-foot trestle table and a cool box full of homemade meze—was always heaving with people.

For weeks, I circled the bustling stall, exchanging waves over the crowd, until I finally mustered the courage to arrange a meeting after the market closed. I helped him pack up, and we headed to The Wheatsheaf—the traders’ post-market haunt at that time. That conversation changed the trajectory of my life.

Jad and I struck up an easy friendship, and before long, I was helping out at the stall every Saturday for the love of it. I had no expectations—just a passion for food and an eagerness to learn. In return, Jad taught me how to make falafel from scratch, a skill that would unexpectedly shape my future.

One day, he threw me a challenge:

“I’ll teach you how to make falafel. You keep whatever money you make. When the falafel brings in as much as the meze, we’re partners.”

I love a challenge. Armed with a hand mincer and a kilo of chickpeas, I set to work. That first day, I made £100. The next week, I brought three kilos and sold out in an hour. Soon, I was hand-mincing 30 kilos of falafel a week, my right arm growing freakishly muscular from the effort. I eventually scraped together enough to buy a second-hand electric mincer from a catering shop on Tower bridge road.

In 2002, we were invited to be part of a Queen’s Jubilee event at Smithfield Market. We smashed it that day, and Jad turned to me and said, “That’s it—we’re partners.”

A year later, Café Arabica opened in West London. We had no money, no experience, and we did everything ourselves—from plumbing to painting to making tables out of plywood.

Despite our shoestring beginnings, we got early rave reviews from Jay Rayner, Matthew Fort, and Fay Maschler, and for a while, we were flying. But the long hours, financial stress, and sheer naivety of it all caught up with us. After two years, we had to walk away—a tough but invaluable lesson in what it really takes to run a restaurant.