Physically dominating the bottom end of the High Street and the entrance to Pretoria Avenue; the Oxfam; the zebra crossing; the chairs we are asked to call 'street furniture' these days; the entrance to the Embassy Snooker Club; the municipal carpark; Moon Pizza; Queen's Cafe and the Co-Op Pharmacy, strides the mighty Turkish Shop.
Actually called the Gazi International Supermarket, this thriving business started as a corner store and is now extending its economic influence all along the market, sending a shudder through any trader in groceries, delicatessen, bottles of pickles, olives, fresh fruit or vegetables. The Turkish Shop's power reaches right up the High Street to way past Sainsbury's which cannot compete on price for fresh produce or, particularly since its refurbishment, on choice.
The Turkish shop sells some booze, but is loved by many for the best fresh non-sliced bread around, the best value pita, and has some great offers on fresh produce that need to be checked almost daily. Sainsbury's can't usually beat them on price as they are too busy watching what Tesco's are getting away with and matching that. Nor do they stock fresh artichokes.
The Turkish shop sells a wonderful choice of juices - Peach, Apricot, (Sour Cherry is my favourite as it goes very well with Vodka), and bunches of fresh herbs - coriander (which still has roots on, lovers of Thai cooking should note), dill, mint, thyme. The existence of the Turkish shop is the single most powerful reason why the kind of pasty middle-class hippy businesses that try to pass off watery olives as a luxury item in Borough Market will never succeed in this end of the borough.
Walthamstow market, which is dying visibly, will be hard to gentrify into a Greenwich when these types of foodie fraudsters would be exposed on choice, price and quality every time by this Turkish shop (and those who have also made a sensible adaptation to specialised niches, such as Orientex, further up the hill.) Any Market trader who fails to note how well this shop markets its goods is doomed at the bottom and middle end of the high street. The effective leverage of competition along the road has caused many a shop to fail and box of fruit to be sold off at the top of the hill for a quid at the end of a Saturday afternoon (I do mean a full box, not just a plastic tub - the standard unit in a market where traders and customers alike do not often speak good English).
I have a wealthy relative who recently stayed the night on my non-centrally heated floor, without a sleeping bag, so he could stock up at this shop in the morning and then return to Chester, boom-city of the North West, because what we have here is so very very much better than the best that city has to offer. My sister in Boston, Lincolnshire, home of British fresh produce asks me to bring up aubergines and other goodies like raw cashews when I visit. Real Turkish Delights wend their way to Wiltshire for Christmas.
I have traveled the world myself, probably more than most, and have to confess to daydreaming in such food heavens as Bangkok and Beijing about the wonders of this shop. Though not to the extent of rudely cutting short my stay, admittedly, the existence of this shop as a treat to look forward to on my return has tempered the pain of partings several times. On a trip to a few months back Berlin I noted that the more established Turkish community there also did not seem to have a Turkish shop this good. It ranks alongside Orientex and Faris's Supermarket as one of the culinary jewels of the High Street.
It is a pity therefore that they are getting rather paranoid about the public and implementing some very unreasonable policies at present preventing people freely taking their shopping bags and trollies into their shop in case they are used to steal things. Treating all comers as thieves is not the way to create goodwill in these recessionary times.
(Updated 6 November 2008)