Books for Cooks Notting Hill, W11

Books for Cooks. Sharper readers may already have cottoned onto what this shop sells.

- DAVID ELLIS

It’s found in the perfect part of Notting Hill, Blenheim Crescent, just above the hucksters of lower Portobello Road but below the butchers and rag shops of the upper reaches. It opened here in 1983, across the road from where it is now, smaller but equally implausible: Britain in the early Eighties was not a golden age for home cooks. Which is why, really, Heidi Lascelles got going in the first place. On the hunt for German recipes, she discovered cookery books of any kind were hard to find. They existed — beautifully written but hit-and-miss ideas from Elizabeth David, more reliable pages from Jane Grigson — but many offered only instructions; no cultural context, no nutritional information. A nurse by training, Lascelles thought something might be done. So she did it. Cookbooks from across the globe were collected and put on display; when chefs and curious home cooks came and requested something, Lascelles would buy it in. The improbable idea became probable enough that new premises were required, and soon she moved over the road here, to number four.