It’s probably no surprise to those who know me, but one of my favourite places on the planet — literally — speaks to the foodie in me, and to the addiction to top quality ingredients I’ve developed since graduating 25 years ago from burnt pancakes to being a serious kitchen enthusiast and cook.

And nobody who’s eaten at my table refuses a return invitation.

It was probably inevitable, therefore, that one of my first forays out in London this week was to the Borough Market; even in Melbourne (the so-called food capital of the Southern Hemisphere) the markets we have — which are excellent, don’t get me wrong — aren’t a patch on this.

There has been a market on this site in Southwark for over 1,000 years; the market claims to have operated since 1014 “and probably much longer.” My only complaint with it is that it isn’t located 38 degrees south: I’d kill to have this in Melbourne.

Since discovering the Borough Market on my last trip to the UK in 2008, I have dreamed about this place, with its seemingly endless array of purveyors of the finest ingredients from British, French and other providores: all of which are, by and large, superior to the nevertheless excellent fare we’re blessed with in Australia, and allowing for the currency conversion (with one dollar buying 59p at time of writing) is generally cheaper than what we have access to at home.

Someone once claimed to me that the “nutrient content” of ingredients in the UK was “lower” than food we can buy in Australia: that for example, a piece of British beef was less nutrient-dense than its Australian equivalent. Seriously…such utter garbage is readily debunked by visiting a place like the Borough Market, and in any case, even if it’s accepted poor food is readily available in the UK, that acknowledgement demands the concession that there’s plenty of rubbish on the market for consumption in Australia, too.

The great drawback of being a tourist (in my case, at least) is that save for something to eat, I couldn’t buy anything: I have nowhere to cook it! So “wandering and wishing” was how I spent the afternoon. Non-aficionados may laugh, but markets like this are like a playground to me.

Feeling like lunch, I bought a sausage roll for £5.50; this might sound expensive until it’s pointed out the “sausage rolls” are more like meat loaves for one (that’s them in the middle right-hand shelf, above), and quite the departure from the stodgy muck sold in convenience stores and most bakeries. In fact — were one resident in London — a raid on the Ginger Pig would be obligatory, yielding pork pies, pasties, and other delicious things.

It was probably a good thing I found the bakery stand first, really, for Turnips — one of many excellent purveyors of fruit and vegetables at the Borough Market — was selling fresh-cooked wild mushroom risotto (for £8.50, which is a bit steep); when I sought to smell it cooking, the stallholder handed me a disposable spoonful to try. It was one of the best things I have tasted in a very long time: velvety smooth mushrooms — possibly with chanterelles and/or ceps — melded perfectly with creamy rice and seasoned beautifully, with a hint of rosemary. Had I not eaten the log-sized sausage roll, I probably would have handed over a tenner and change for a serve of this with some black truffle grated into it.

And I’m generally dismissive of anything remotely vegan, or even vegetarian.

Wandering around this foodie nirvana reinforced the reality that this market is better than anything we have in Australia: even in Melbourne, with its abundance of food markets such as those in South Melbourne, Prahran, the Queen Victoria Market in the city and elsewhere, we simply don’t have anything as good as this. All of our markets, while boasting some excellent merchants, offset the quality of the overall offer with stallholders selling what can only be described as food-grade crap. Dear old Queen Victoria, I’m looking at you through an especially critical lens, although you’re not the only miscreant on this measure. It’s a shame.

There’s another market in London at Spitalfields that I believe some gourmands contend is even better than the Borough Market. I’m not planning to go to Spitalfields to find out; for one thing, I simply don’t have enough time in London on this visit to do everything. But in a sense, I don’t have to: whenever in London, the Borough Market is a happy place for me…even if I can’t cart a load of stuff out to cook!

There is another excellent reason to visit the Borough Market, of course, and that’s for dinner: Roast Restaurant — also discovered on my stay in London in 2008, but known to me prior to that thanks to British MasterChef (“proper” MasterChef, not the retarded “look at me” abomination produced by Network Ten in Australia) — is sensational, and whilst I didn’t dine there on my day visit, I’m going back before I hit the road around the UK at the weekend.

And for this reason, it feels fitting to end this post with another image, which just seems to beg the question of what to order for dinner…