About Sourced Market

The Sourced Market runs alongside one side of the cavernous space and is rather like a linear food hall. It’s open from 7.30am-9.30pm Monday-Friday, 8am-8pm Saturday and9am-7pm Sunday. Expect to see biodynamic meats from Jody Sheckter’s Laverstoke Park, bread from De Gustibus, cheeses from Neal’s Yard Dairy, Monmouth coffee, meat from the Ginger Pig and sustainably sourced fish and seafood.

Charles Campion

The employment of a PR agency has already ensured plenty of publicity about this 'market'. Blackboards placed along the station concourse make it sound as if a rival to Paris’s famed Rungis market or Borough Market has just opened. The reality is rather different. Just beyond the concessions for Marks & Spencer Simply Food, Benugo and Chop’d, two of the shop units – an impressive frontage around a hundred feet long – have been turned into ‘Sourced Market’.

The thing is, it’s not a market at all – it’s a food shop. A good food shop, in the mould of Whole Foods Market or a Daylesford Organic, though on a smaller scale. There’s nothing rustic about it – it’s been designed by contemporary interior designer Shaun Clarkson, but with its white tiling and pretty calligraphy on blackboards, it could be a concession in Harrods or Selfridges.

The right-hand side sells wines and beers, and has a counter selling charcuterie, cheeses, and other deli items; there are tables and chairs in the concourse where you can sit and eat platters and have a glass of wine. The left-hand side is more of a traiteur, with prepared and cooked food items to take home, plus lots of snacks and wholesome ‘ready meals’ for office workers.

Once you get over the irritation of the blatant false advertising of this ‘market’, the stock selection does impress. It’s all fine stuff, much of it organic or ethically produced – the bananas are fair trade, for example, the meat is free-range, and so on.

Still, the list of suppliers reads a bit like the usual suspects – cheeses are from Neal’s Yard Dairy, hams from Ginger Pig, bread from Flour Power, Monmouth Coffee, Utobeer, Brindisa, Les Caves du Pyrene – if you’re passing though the station on the way home, it might be a bit of a treat. But for everybody else, it’s hardly somewhere worth crossing town for.

Some of the food and veg are clearly there for their window-dressing appeal. As we sat drinking our cappuccino, one of the staff wheeled a huge trolley of entire maize stalks and giant kale plants past us. ‘Where do we put these, Caroline?’ she asked the shop manager. ‘In the warehouse,’ came the reply. So, a good place to pick up quality food – but market it ain’t.

Sourced Market www.sourcedmarket.com, Ground Floor on the northern concourse, St Pancras International, Pancras Rd, NW1 2QP (7833 9353) Kings Cross St Pancras tube/rail. Open 7.30am-9.30pm Mon-Fri; 8am-8pm Sat; 9am-8pm Sun.

Guy Dimond