EAT IN PECKHAM

In 2002, The Economist wrote about British "food deserts"--neighbourhoods with limited or no access to fresh, healthy food. With their plethora of takeaway joints, budget supermarkets and not much else, areas of high-density public housing were regarded as particularly barren. Though Peckham has its share of public housing, it also holds culinary riches.

The kebab shops patronised by the likes of Jacqui Smith, Britain's home secretary, are legion, as are the "hard-discounting" supermarket chains like Lidl and Netto (Waitrose is strangely absent). Other "sarf London" culinary traditions abound--opposite the library that has become a hackneyed metaphor for Peckham's regeneration, Manze's Pie'n'Mash shop ("finest jellied eels"), with its marble tables, polished copper serveries and tiled walls that would suit Mayfair. It is a local icon, and the proud bearer of an historic "Blue Plaque" since 2005.

But Rye Lane, Peckham's main drag, has a decidedly more international flavour. In William Blake's times, Peckham was a vista of market gardens that fed London. Today, every other shop seems to be a cellphone-card hole-in-the-wall; the rest overflow with fresh vegetables, sides of beef and veritable shoals of fresh and smoked fish.

Beyond the basics, it is an exotic display for the uninitiated. Spiky breadfruit, okra, cassava and giant yams are as least as common as spinach and tomato. Fresh off the plane from New Zealand, I delightedly bought a bag of the biggest "bananas" I'd ever seen: alas, raw plantain is not to be recommended to any reader.

A stroll up the Rye has an edge--Peckham's population has outgrown its sidewalks and an assertive, face-and-elbows-forward, don't-meet-eyes stride is usually called for. The flagstones are sticky with filth, and the red double-decker racetrack mere inches away. Megaphone preachers find no audience except themselves, and only add another obstacle to be swerved around. They congregate outside the Hope pub: never was a drinking establishment less aptly named.

Further up the Rye, the food shops interspersed between nail-and-hair salons offer frightening displays. Streamers of hanging "boiler" chickens adorn the open-air meat counters, feathers and all: there are no pristine supermarket packages here.

Piles of pig trotters jostle for space with sheep stomachs and goat heads cut cross-section, Damien-Hirst style. The local legend that "bushmeat"--smoked pieces of primate, surreptitiously imported in passengers' suitcases--is available down certain back alleys, is probably just that.

For such a treasure trove, thank Peckham's status as a melting-pot--even by London's standards. As Southall is to south Asians and Brixton to West Indians, Peckham is to west Africans--the communities from CÃ´te d'Ivoire, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria are some of the largest outside the countries of origin. In 2002, when Britain hosted the Commonwealth Games, about 20 of the 30-strong Sierra Leonean team decided (illegally) to stay, and evanesced. Many are said to have ended up in Peckham.

Other communities are well represented: my own culinary routine includes a Bangladeshi fishmonger, a Turkish-Cypriot greengrocer, a Vietnamese mini-market and an Algerian-run market-stall pizzeria. The Latin American community is growing, and the Polish plumber of popular legend is well served, even by the Turkish corner shop.

A few years ago, Southwark Council produced "Taste the Flavours of Peckham", a free recipe book that took a tour of Rye Lane's environs: curried mackerel with spinach and yam, courtesy of the Ghanaian Kumasi Market, is especially good. Every December, the "Flavas of Peckham" street festival brings healthy eating and the tastes of globalisation to the kebab-munching masses. In 2007, "Persia in Peckham", by Sally Butcher, who runs an Iranian emporium called Persepolis, on Peckham Road, won the Sunday Times Cookbook of the Year award.

Each summer for the last few years, "I Love Peckham", a cultural festival, floods the town centre with music, dancing and artistic happenings: its launch was a direct response to the grim aftermath of Damilola Taylor's murder in 2000. Now, "I Love Peckham" stickers, posters, T-shirts, badges and banners are everywhere around Rye Lane. Throughout the year, on both sides of Rye Lane, brightly coloured banners keep the message flying in a mixture of the many languages likely to be audible on the street below.

It will take more than a banner for unconditional love to break out on the streets of Peckham. But if the route to love goes via the stomach, Peckham is at least halfway there.

(*Conrad Heine is an editor for Economist.com. This column is part of his week-long diary about Peckham, published on Economist.com)