Easter Eating

A large part of the Easter long weekend is often spent with family and loved ones around a table laden with delectable treats for ample consumption. Besides all the chocolate eggs and bunnies, there are also traditional Easter staples such as hot cross buns, Simnel cake, fish on Good Friday and roast lamb on Sunday. Here we run through the best places in London to stock your Easter larder, including a run through of top cheese shops and food halls. Bon appétit!

London's Top Chocolate Shops

Easter is the time when chocolate truly comes into its own and you can gorge on sweetened cocoa beans for breakfast if you really feel like it. Chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies or just slabs of the stuff, it doesn't matter what shape it takes, anything chocolate-coated goes. There are the off-the-shelf Cadbury's type of egg you'll find in your local newsagents but if you really want to spoil friends and family you'll have to dig a little deeper than that. Go the extra mile this Easter and invest in a very special egg by visiting one of our Top Chocolate Shops where everything is handmade and chocolate is elevated to an art form. The list includes London's well known purveyors of fine chocolates featuring experts like Paul A Young and William Curley who has recently opened a second branch in Belgravia following the success of his original Richmond shop. Easter treats for children include chocolate bunny lolly pops and figurines while adults can indulge in William Curley's range of Amedei Easter Eggs filled with a mixture of fruit and nut chocolates, truffles, caramels and other enticing flavours. Melt in Notting Hill is another favourite with its chocolate shots at the bar, a kitchen-within-a-shop, children's mini masterclasses and tasting sessions.

London's Top Chocolate Shops

London's Best Butchers

Easter is a time when the family gets together and a roast is the traditional way to mark the occasion - a real feast after the period of fast during Lent. A leg of lamb is a popular choice, ideally slow roasted with sprigs of rosemary to bring out the flavours, served with roast potatoes, steamed veg and mint sauce. For the best place to buy your joint look to London butchers who only stock meat from animals which have organically reared and fed to produce a tasty, tender and more succulent end result. At C Lidgate, a family run butchers for 150 years, David and his son Danny source their meats from Highgrove - home farm of the Prince of Wales - and Gatcombe Park as well as other smaller organic farms. The Ginger Pig is just as fussy when it comes to the welfare of the stock they sell with lamb, pork and beef all reared on their own 300-acre farms on the North Yorkshire Moors. Allens of Mayfair, suppliers of choice for top notch restaurants like Le Gavroche, The Dorchester and Cecconi's, is particularly famous for its game. Although they now have a new website where you can order online, it'd be a shame not to visit the Mount Street shop which retains some of its original Victorian features and plenty of old fashioned customer service. In Barons Court, HG Walter has been consistently winning awards for their organic meats - and Londoners happily travel across town for their stuffed chicken breasts and minted racks of lamb.

C Lidgate - Information

Ginger Pig, all branches - Information

Allens of Mayfair - Information

HG Walter - Information

Fish on Good Friday

Traditionally, Roman Catholics abstain from eating meat every Friday of the year and Good Friday is no exception. For Christians Good Friday is treated as a fast day so many Roman Catholics (and Protestants) opt for fish on Holy Friday. You have to get up early to get the catch of the day - which is precisely what London's best fishmongers do, heading to Billingsgate Market at 4.45am every morning so, thankfully, you don't have to. The mark of a good fish shop is one where the fresh produce is beautifully laid out on ice, the choice is extensive and the fish hand picked. Buzz words at Rex Goldsmith's Chelsea Fishmonger are 'line caught', 'non-destructive' and 'sustainable' fishing methods. Meanwhile, over at The Fish Shop at Kensington Place you can buy fish dishes pre-prepared at the Kensington Place restaurant next door. Many of London's best fishmongers are family run small businesses which have been in the trade for years like Covent Garden Fishmongers, set up almost 20 years ago by Philip Diamond who now runs the Chiswick shop with his son Gary and is an expert in the field. Below we've listed some of London's best fishmongers who'll happily supply you with the freshest fish for Good Friday.

Covent Garden Fishmongers - Information

Moxon's, all branches - Information

Chelsea Fishmonger - Information

Walter Purkis & Sons - Information

The Fish Shop at Kensington Place - Information

Fishworks, all branches - Information

London's Best Easter Bakeries

Treating yourself to some baked goodies has long been synonymous with celebrating Easter in the UK, where Hot Cross Buns, Simnel Cake and Easter biscuits have become cultural mainstays of the annual food calendar. For the most lavish spread of Easter goodies you should definitely pop into one of the six Konditor & Cook bakeries in London. The highly respected cake specialists offer a gloriously comprehensive coverage when it comes to Easter treats, including perfectly formed Hot Cross Buns, a hearty glazed Easter Stollen with almonds and cranberries, an array of bunny shaped gingerbreads and shortbreads, and some traditional Easter biscuits. But their piece de resistance is a decadently colossal Simnal Cake - a fruity delight covered with a thick toasted almond topping atop which there lays, traditionally, 11 marzipan balls to symbolise the apostles minus Judas. Another expensive, but good, bakery for all sorts of sweet and colourful cakes is Baker & Spice, the more refined sister of the Patisserie Valerie chain. For French style biscuits and breads head to Poilane in Belgravia while the Nordic Bakery in Soho serves up huge rustic sticky cinnamon buns for just £2 or Boston cakes for 50p more. Back to a stronger Easter theme, the Euphorium Bakery sells delicious Hot Cross Buns in its four outlets across London; while Gail's always impresses with its tasty spread of cakes, breads and biscuits so should, we hope, hit home with some traditional Easter offerings. Of course, most supermarkets now not only sell excellent Hot Cross Buns, but have also branched out with a cluster of new varieties, including extra spicy, apple & cinnamon, and date & cranberry varieties. Waitrose even does a special Belgian Chocolate version for those who really want to push the boat out.

Konditor & Cook, all branches - Information

Baker & Spice, all branches - Information

Patisserie Valerie, all branches - Information

Poilane - Information

Nordic Bakery - Information

Euphorium Bakery, both branches - Information

Gail's, all branches - Information

London's Best Cheese Shops

Cheese may not be traditionally reserved for Easter consumption but you could do a lot worse than taking a nice selection of cheeses when visiting friends or family this Easter. Lucky that London has an excellent selection of specialist cheese shops, then. La Fromagerie has built up a reputation as one of the best cheese shops in the country and is well worth a visit - if only browsing - if you're near its two shops in Marylebone or Highbury. The former separates its cheese room from a general delicatessen with a huge, heavy sliding glass door designed to keep the temperatures down and the rich aroma in. Cheese enthusiasts are advised to make the most of the sampling policy at Neal's Yard Dairy, which have specialist shops in Covent Garden and Borough Market. With over 200 cheeses on offer, you can certainly leave with your own tailor-made cheese board to bring out over the long Easter weekend. Just a stone's throw from South Kensington tube, La Cave a Fromage specialises in French cheeses, has a no-fridge policy (so prepare your nose for a good work out) and sells its creamy wares to top chefs such as Tom Aikens. For more French cheeses, alongside a wide selection of English artisan cheeses, try the historic Paxton & Whitfield on Jermyn Street. Its credentials? It used to be cheesemonger to Queen Victoria, no less. Staff will even help you pick out the perfect red wine or port to compliment your choice. Cheers!

La Fromagerie, both branches - Information

Neal's Yard Dairy Covent Garden - Information

Neal's Yard Dairy Borough Market - Information

La Cave a Fromage - Information

Paxton & Whitfield - Information

London's Food Halls

The food halls of Fortnum & Mason, Selfridges and Harrods are seen as the finest in London and rightly so. They offer a mouth watering selection of hard to resist foods - and often stock brands that you won't find anywhere else. But we also like Partridges and relative newcomer Whole Foods which, with its 80,000 square foot site dedicated to organic food, has done well to earn its place on the list. All of these food halls are far superior to your average supermarket and are the places to visit when you're on the hunt for fine foods - with each offering something slightly different. This Easter, for example, Fortnum & Mason is partnering with Lulu Guinness who has created the London-centric design for their Easter Egg boxes, adorning the blue boxes with images of Big Ben and the Union Jack. Over at Selfridges Food Hall Mark Hix has just opened a new restaurant and champagne bar to a design by Terence Conran's team and featuring art work by Tracey Emin - certainly worth checking out while you're shopping for Easter eggs. Head to Harrods for Whoopie Pies - available at the ground floor patisserie - as well as traditional Easter foods, beautifully presented at each counter from the Godiva Chocolatier to Pasticceria Scarpato's traditional Italian Easter cake.

Fortnum & Mason - Information

Selfridges Food Hall - Information

Harrods - Information

Partridges, Chelsea - Information

Whole Foods - Information