Pay tribute to all the best produce at a beautiful food boutique

Forget the journalism malarkey. I’m a frustrated shopkeeper.

When I was a kid, my sister and I would play in my granny’s kitchen, where the peeled spuds and white cabbage would be boiling for Sunday lunch.

She kept a huge jar that was full of 1ps and 2ps. That’d be the float, so we could rack the table up with boxes of cornflakes and Ruskoline. My sister was always the customer. I was the grumpy owner, like Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours.

At about the same formative age, a real shop got stuck in my psyche. It was at Edinburgh’s Haymarket and was an old-school grocer called Stonehouse.

They had a ladder, to reach the more vertiginous stock, and the keepers wore striped aprons.

Ever since, I’ve loved good specialist food shop or delis. I’ve always fantasised about being the boss of one, but visiting will have to do.

And, nowhere can really compare to Edinburgh’s Valvona & Crolla, which turned 90 this year.

It’s something of a cathedral to Italian food and wine. I can almost hear the chubby putto singing and flapping their tiny wings, while I peruse the jams, Parmigiano, the bright fridge full of tomatoes, their vino grotto, the colourful selection of ceramics, and the cookbooks.

You could be in Rome, rather than on a section of Leith Walk that also features a branch of Greggs and a bookies.

Visiting this deli is the opposite of going to the supermarket, which always feels like a punishment. I usually let my other half do the drudge shopping, while I visit the nice shops for my ‘fancies’, like jars of good honey and nut-laden granola that costs a tenner.

Valvona & Crolla director, author Mary Contini, told me that one of the things that customers love most about her place is that it’s always there. Perhaps it’s that. The consistency. After all, they’ve survived WWII, Covid, and the internet.

They haven’t been completely resistant to the latter. You can buy from them online, though it’s a bit sad to miss out on the whole experience of a physical visit.

There are other shops that have magic. I did love the food hall at Jenners, especially as it was easy to hide in.

The shelves were so close together that you felt like you were in a school library.

There are similar feels in department stores Le Bon Marche in Paris, or Harrods in London.

So many treasures, all squished together. It's a choice overload, like in the 1970 book, Future Shock. Too much is detrimental to decision-making. Indeed. I pick things up, then put them down again. Where am I?

In these places, the sensorial experience is such that I’ll often buy something, then wonder why the heck I made the purchase. As soon as you own it, the item seems out of context in your greasy kitchen and a tiny £25 box of chocolate truffles doesn’t seem so essential.

Then there are more edited independants like Dunkeld’s beautiful provisions shop, Lon.

It’s way more curated, and is owned by Great British Bake Off’s Flora Shedden. I get befuddled there because I want the whole room and everything in it. It makes me want to repaint my lounge, but all I have is a jar of kimchi.

Still, visiting it is a lovely experience.

The staff are excellent, and leave you to it. That’s my favourite style of shopping. I don’t like feeling stalked when I’m browsing. I jump if a shop assistant asks me if I need any help.

I think that’s because I always felt paranoid that I look like a shoplifter, ever since I was stopped by a security guard at John Menzies on Princes Street, circa 1982, and frog-marched to the office, to be accused of stealing a rucksack. (I’d paid). I still feel as if I’ve got a shifty look.

Anyway, there are other excellent places, like the Edinburgh, St Andrews or Glasgow branches of IJ Mellis.

However, I do feel that you have to be a serious buyer, when you go there. You can’t be airy-fairy, like I often am, while shopping.

You only have a short window of time to inhale the scent of Minger and run your gaze across the crowdie, before the monger takes your order.

I know someone who visited at Christmas, queued for ages, and bought a couple of small slices of cheese, before arriving at the till. It was £60. They paid in a fluster, and cried later.

Their purchase might have been the same price as a pair of new shoes, but you can’t eat loafers.

I’m also a fan of Roots, Fruits and Flowers in Glasgow and Real Foods in Edinburgh.

It’s not cool, but I’m a bit of a hippy who loves herbal tea and the smell of joss sticks, so I can’t resist a visit to these ethical grocers. If I splurge on goji berries, tofu, packets of miso soup and sticky dates, they cancel out the chocolate and crisps I imbibe.

The last time I went to Edinburgh’s Mexican deli, Lupe Pintos, the owner let my friend and I taste some of their varieties of mezcal. Thus, I have very positive associations with this great shop, where there are more varieties of hot sauce than your sinuses can handle. It’s colourful and a bit rough around the edges, at 33-years-old, but we don’t want them to change.