Exmouth Market

If Exmouth Market were a person, it would be that friend who says they’re “not really doing anything tonight” and then turns up at an underground supper club with a DJ, a kimchi sommelier, and a temporary tattoo of a mushroom. It’s casual. It’s cool. It doesn’t shout—but it whispers so well that you lean in closer.

Tucked between Clerkenwell and Islington, Exmouth Market is a pedestrianised stretch of street that’s less market and more moment. A place that has shapeshifted from 19th-century grit to 21st-century gastro-glam, it walks the fine line between boho charm and bougie indulgence—and does so in very good shoes, possibly vintage, definitely Italian.

A Brief History of Street Cred

The name “Exmouth Market” harks back to the Earl of Exmouth, because of course it does. Aristocrats and street markets go together like oysters and Tabasco: oddly well. The market itself began in the late 1800s, slinging produce, fish, and flowers to the working-class residents of Clerkenwell—a district once known for its radical printers, nonconformist thinkers, and suspiciously seditious pub singalongs.

But like many parts of London, Exmouth Market fell on hard times during the mid-20th century. Bomb damage, urban neglect, and the slow collapse of inner-city life left the area limping. By the 1980s, it was less “hidden gem” and more “please don’t walk down here alone.”

Then, in the late 1990s, the pendulum swung. Artists came. Coffee followed. Property developers sniffed the air. Suddenly, what was once a fading high street turned into a foodie destination, a brunching mecca, and a place where one can overhear conversations like, “I’m thinking of doing a silent retreat, but just for my phone.”

The Food: Street Feast Without the Mud

Exmouth Market is now best known for its daytime street food stalls, which appear like clockwork on weekdays (usually Monday to Friday, lunchtime hours). It’s less chaotic than Borough, less branded than Camden, and far less tourist-trap than Covent Garden. Here, the regulars include chefs who look like they’ve cooked for Radiohead and students who haven’t eaten since yesterday.

Craving Venezuelan arepas? The cheerful team at Guasacaca has got your back. Yearning for Ethiopian lentil stew served on injera so soft it might double as bedding? Zeret Kitchen delivers. Want a dosa, a bao, a burrito, or something unpronounceable involving fermented cashews? You’re in the right place.

But Exmouth isn’t just a lunchtime flurry. It has some proper sit-down institutions too.

Morito—the younger, spicier sibling to Moro, the beloved North African-Spanish restaurant next door—is where people go for fried chickpeas, labneh, and the feeling they are, at last, part of the right kind of cult.

Caravan, once a Clerkenwell pioneer, does coffee like it was invented here, and brunch like a high-stakes art form. There’s Paesan for pasta, Berber & Q for fire-kissed meat and dips, and even a tiny outpost of Briki, where the coffee’s Greek, and the pastries are flaky.

Independent Spirit: No Chains, Thanks

One of Exmouth Market’s greatest triumphs is its almost pathological avoidance of chain stores. No Pret, no Starbucks, no Gails looming like the Tesco of sourdough. Instead, you’ll find independent bookshops, a shop that sells only stationery (that smells faintly of dreams), a tattoo parlour with unexpectedly polite staff, and boutiques full of things you can’t afford but suddenly feel you need—like a linen kimono or a plant pot shaped like a sad clown.

There’s also Exmouth Arms, a proper pub that’s still recognisably a pub, albeit one where the craft beer menu reads like a poem about hops. Friday nights spill onto the street, pint glasses teetering on bollards, strangers chatting like they’ve known each other since birth or at least since lockdown.

Clerkenwell’s Cool, Without Trying

Technically part of Clerkenwell, Exmouth Market is surrounded by London’s curious contradictions. Just behind the market lies Spa Fields, a park that oscillates between dog-walker serenity and chaotic frisbee carnage. Further out, you hit the brutalist wonder of Finsbury Health Centre, designed by modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin—a man who believed that architecture could make people better. Whether that applies to Exmouth Market is a question for the philosophers (or at least the hungover sociology students eavesdropping outside the café).

There’s also something faintly Parisian about Exmouth. The pace is slower. People sit outside even when it rains. There’s a lot of leaning and sipping and pretending the traffic noise is just ambiance. It’s London, but the volume is turned down—and the aesthetic turned way, way up.

Final Bite

So why does Exmouth Market matter? Because it’s what London gets right—when it’s not being bulldozed into glass anonymity. It’s local, layered, full of flavours and contradictions. It’s a reminder that cities aren’t just for moving through, they’re for loitering in. For noticing.

First fish and chip shop in London