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Food

Breaking bread in Borough Market

Meet the team bringing Jewish bakes to Southwark for the first time

June 24, 2021 11:16
challa
4 min read

Until last week you’d struggle to buy a challah, bulka or rugelach in the entire borough of Southwark. “There are 250,000 people living here and not a single Jewish bakery” says Andrew Lester, whose family have now filled that gourmet gap with their new stall at Borough Market — Moishe’s Bagelry and Bakery.

This is not the first haimish food venture for the Lester family, who now have a handful of (non-kosher) Jewish food stalls dotted across East London and are something of a deli dynasty.

“My father, Ivan has been working in food for years. He trained at a London hotel — he was one of those chefs in a tall white hat. He also had a café back in the day and over the years drifted between different street foods. Not that they were called street foods then. He had a stall at Broadway Market when it was tiny and sold fish balls, latkes, falafel and goujons etc. He and my mum, Sandra, ran it together. My brother Howard runs it now.”

Howard has also recently opened a food stall called the Jewish Kitchen at Hackney Bridge — a street food market on what was the Olympic park; and the Lesters have also been serving up salt beef, bagels and falafel at Borough Market under their Nana Fanny’s brand for the last ten years.