A wander down London’s Edgware Road on a hot and hazy day. Edgware Road, growing up, was always a route to somewhere else. My best friend lived at Park West, an apartment complex just off it – so glamorous that it had its own swimming pool – while the Paddington Bear shop was on Crawford Place, a tiny rivulet off the main thoroughfare (I was a big PB fan). But mostly, Edgware Road led to the park, and once you turned left at Marble Arch, to Oxford Street and Selfridges.
A few years ago, Selfridges relocated its confectionery hall to the basement; this was a wise move (cooler down there) and in many ways it’s better, but I do miss the way it was, with the jelly bean station and the bars of chocolate you’d find in any newsagent. It’s all gone a bit posh and… commercial. It seems more aimed at the tourist than the person who might live down the road. There was also not a single bar in the 80-85% cocoa range. So I went across to Marks & Spencer to buy a bar of their excellent 85% Peruvian, £3.20 (while there I recommend their pot of chilled watermelon chunks on a hot day, quite something).
Luckily, back home in the fridge I’d kept a bottle of cacaofruit water, £3.25 (Babao Cacao) from the Amazon Basin – the place in South America, not a Jeff Bezos offshoot. This is a delicious, refreshing drink made from the fruit of the cacao plant, which would otherwise be discarded, so it’s a natural bit of upcycling. The water is rich in electrolytes and minerals and is naturally sweet – though a bit too much for me, so I dilute it further with more sparkling water.
Social links
Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media
All Rights Reserved
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.