Greensmiths

I loved this market. So many fresh selections. I was visiting and wanted a sandwich and a salad. This little neighborhood gem offered both with fresh selections, as well as many fine, ‘hard-​to-​find’ fresh goods. This is what a grocery should be – simple with quality products.

I was in London last week on holiday. Had the opportunity to cook up some of my own grub rather than go to another restaurant.
What was required to carry out my dinner vision was a perfect cut of beef, mushrooms, Red wine and some salad greens.
Cannot speak too highly of the quality of the meat or the professional services of the skilled butcher.
I walked away with what can best be described as an award winning English Longhorn Rib Steak.
Kudos to the kind butcher who helped me identify the proper piece of meat for my dinner.
The pro also neatly trimmed off some bone and errant gristle so my purchase efficiency was maximized.
A five hacksaw rating is in order.
Three words best describe Greensmith’s: Service, Quality, Value!
Worth a return trip to London if only for another fine piece o’ meat.

Right around the corner from our apartment and dear to my palate!
Came here for lunch late and had a wonderful, homey meal, everything was wonderful, tasty, and well priced.
The service was great, smiling, helpful, and attentive.
Did I mention the pork products? Wow, how good are they?! Wonderful! Makes me want to line my mouth with bacon.
It’s more than just a butcher’s shop one sees from the street, come in and have a wander and discover the rest of the place, the café upstairs, the kitchen down a couple flights, and so many wonderful prepared foods for takeaway.
Enjoy!

Great produce, good service, a traditional supermarket un the same bracket as whole foods, but British and lower priced! Sits comfortably between Iceland and a new coop, it really is gem of south london. A definite yes!

Open All Hours, loved that show. Half expect Arkwright to be slamming a till somewhere, or Granville outside wobbling on his delivery bike.
A proper old fashioned food hall, with lots of nooks and crannies to get lost in. Usually end up spending about £40 per carrier bag, so I’ll warn you it’s not cheap — but great meat courtesy of the Ginger Pig people — thats the name of the butchers in there. I’m not having a go at gingers, some of my best friends are gingers I’ll have you know.

Greensmiths bills itself as a local supermarket with a real difference, sporting, as it does, a wine merchant, a Ginger Pig butchery franchise, a bakery and a chichi display of fruit and veg, as well as some eyewatering prices. Oh, and there is a café upstairs. But this view would be somewhat superficial there are certainly cheaper places to buy breakfast cereal and tins of stuff, but that’s not to say everything is overpriced or expensive (not that the two are necessarily the same thing in any case). Smoked ham hocks and charcuterie are a good deal the former a substantial chunk of meaty goodness for £3, the ideal basis for a warming ham and pea soup, and finely sliced salamis at bout £2.50 a packet. Far classier than Waitrose. Their many and various hummus varieties are ace. I’ve had some genuinely wild mushrooms from here but only in season and a slice of banana and coconut tart that I still think of with wistful affection many months on. The staff genuinely add something they are interested in what they’re selling, and have a degree of insight you’re unlikely to find in any run-​of-​the-​mill establishment. I’d exempt the butchers from this comment, who I find unfailingly sullen, unhelpful, and on occasion actually rude. If I was going to gripe, then I’d pick on the checkout area, which is a bit cramped, and apt to be rushed by salivating punters at busy times. A very nice shop, nonetheless.

This is a review about their petite café upstairs and not about the grocery store.
Food here is CHEAP! About 3.5 quid for a sandwich. You can’t really beat that. The sandwiches are a tad on the small side, but still enough to fill you. They also have daily specials for sandwiches and salads.
Like most British food, I found the stuff here to be a bit bland and dry. I had the pork and apple sauce sandwich that included two slices of bread, some un-​marinated pieces of meat, and very little apple sauce. I guess for less than $ 5, I can’t complain.
The seats upstairs are in picnic table style, although there is a server that provides you with a menu and takes your order. They have giant plates of pastry in the centre that you can look but can’t touch, meant to tempt you to ask for the server to bring it in front of you so you can have your pick. I was disciplined and only consumed the coffee cake with my eyes. My coworker not so much and consumed a large piece of carrot cake with creamy frosting with his stomach. I was jealous.

This is quite possibly my favorite find during my stay in London.
Greensmiths is deceptively small from the outside. My friend wanted to come in because she was starving and wanted to get something from the display windows. We found a cute little bakery area and a butchers area, in which we proceeded to order a couple baked goods to satiate our hunger. There was some ground meat with a crust on the outside that was absolutely fantastic. The mince pies were okay, but I might just not be used to the taste of mince pie (I’m still not sure what it should taste like.).
Then we noticed stairs! There was a plethora of other things to see. Fresh produce, coffee shop, extensive wine collection, groceries, and a restaurant! I loved the little restaurant hidden in the store. It was obviously the place to have a quiet lunch with friends. The atmosphere was relaxed. If I didn’t live an ocean and some thousands of miles away, I would love to spend my afternoons here sipping on coffee and enjoying a meal with friends. Amongst four of us, we shared a turkey and cranberry sandwich, mushroom risotto, salad, and squash appetizer. The food was light, healthy, and filling. I could tell a great amount of care went into picking fresh ingredients.
Greensmiths has a very young and happy vibe to it. I loved coming in here and I loved browsing around. Definitely a place I would frequent if I could!

Greensmiths is a kind of tardis of a food shop that has a small Ginger Pig butchery selling spectacularly good meat plus a cooked meats counter selling their lovely pies and brilliant sausage rolls, a bakery that sells seriously good bread from the Old Post Office Bakery, a proper greengrocer section selling very fine fruit and veg, plus sectioins selling dairy and wine and cupboard staples like rice and pasta and jam. In the midst of this is a café that makes a fine breakfast — what could be better than a fry up using bacon and eggs from the Ginger Pig? They also do a really good lunch …

One of the best parts about Greensmiths is the Ginger Pig meat counter. Apparently it is a requirement to be a young, hot dude who is obsessed with meat to work at a Ginger Pig meat counter. This makes all of my meat-​buying that much more pleasant and makes vegetarianism unthinkable.
The veggie section is really nice – far nicer than anything in the immediate vicinity. They carry things you might not find elsewhere, today I got a squash called «marrow.» They also have mangos that are actually ripe. The employees in the veg section have the tendency to follow me around as if they suspect that I might steal a runner bean or two, but I’ll forgive this because everything else is so nice and the meat guys are attractive.
Although Greensmiths is more expensive than one of the grody groceries nearby, it’s not obscenely so. I checked the coconut milk that I like, and it’s exactly the same price here as at the Costcutters down the road. So live a little. And try the banana coconut flan pie. It’s to die/​kill for.

This is a story about mince pie.
Once there was a Mince pie. He was made from organic materials. He was a young man, still the size of the top of a tin can. He was a jolly fellow. One day he found himself in a carton on the way to Greensmiths.
He arrived at Greensmiths and assessed his surroundings. There was a display counter full of fresh meat, and that is not to say young and easily-​preyed upon young lasses, that is to say sides of animal, ready to be sliced and cooked. There was pâté and farm fresh eggs. There was a lower section with grocery goods of nice caliber. There was a coffee bar and upstairs sitting area. Everything was cozy and happy. He courted the goat’s milk butter without much success, but made friends with the local, fresh baked breads and rolls in his neighborhood.
One day a human girl arrived at Greensmiths. She liked the look of the place, especially the upstairs sitting area which she thought looked like a wonderful place to relax or to type or to read or to chat or to sing and dance show tunes or to have a roller derby on ice. She saw our little friend the mince pie. She had always wanted to try mince pie. She bought the wee mince man and ate him CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP.

I need to seek therapy for my raw meat obsession. Raw steaks are so dang appealing to me. Only in places like Greensmiths though. Butchers, proper butchers who source their cuts and delicately dismember animals are amazing food artisans. All of the butchers at Greensmiths are professional butchers who only buy and sell the freshest, best meat. The meat is fragrant in here; I almost want to bottle up the scent, put it in my pocket and sniff it throughout the day from time to time.
Besides meat these people carry other amazing organic products. Their wine and champagne selection is formidable. Their milk and cheese selection is really impressive too. The prices match the quality though, so nothing is cheap in here. You get what you pay for. I assure you anything you buy here is worth the price.