THE HILL Stylish swimwear from Melissa Odabash
30 locals
share their West London memories
HERE’S TO THE HILL Celebrating our 30th anniversary issue with Guest Editor KELLY HOPPEN MBE
July 2013
Kelly Hoppen MBE
N
otting Hill for me is like a family, it’s an institution that I have been a part of all my life. I love the banter of the stall owners on Portobello and admire their strength and determination throughout the recession and have always supported them. I bought my first Chinese piece on Portobello which was the beginning of my East meets West style that has become the essence of my career. Walking around the streets and shops and cafes always makes me feel happy and there is always something new and inspirational to check out. Let’s face it, it’s the people of Notting Hill that make it the special place it is and always will be; how very proud I am to be British!
Johnny Ekperigin Julie’s restaurant I first moved to Notting Hill in the late 70s starting as head chef at Julie’s. I remember the very villagelike atmosphere around Julie’s: we had a butcher shop; a grocery shop; a dairy shop; a bakery shop; a post office and a newsagent, plus four pubs of which I used to visit between cooking shifts. Sadly the pubs and the shops have now all gone to the little shop in the sky along with the mix of people that would use them daily. Clarendon Cross is now a very successful area in its own right with many great businesses, some of which have been here as long as Julie’s 40 years.
Memories of Photo by:Rankin
THE HILL
In our magazine’s 30th year, we asked 30 residents, businesses and famous faces to share their most treasured memories of Notting Hill
Frankie Roche, Graffik Gallery
M
any people consider the East the centre of graffiti in London but it really started around West London, especially near Portobello Road. One of the biggest surviving Banksy’s on any wall in London (that hasn’t been stolen or sold in an auction house in the US) is on the corner of our block on Portobello Road. Tourists from every corner of the world pop in and ask us where it is. We were lucky as we opened our doors four years ago just as The Mutoid Waste Company opened their amazing exhibition/art installation One Foot in the Grove just under the Westway. This gave our business the chance to engage immediately with Street Art lovers and also meet the many artists that don’t normally come West!
26 thehillresident.co.uk
Barney Desmazery
Jacqueline Pruskin
Food Editor, BBC Good Food magazine
Local resident
One of the main ingredients to becoming a cookery writer was growing up on Portobello and in Notting Hill. Saturday jobs included sorting fruit ‘n’ veg for market doyenne Cheryl Devlin, bagging beans on the ahead-of-its-time coffee stall that would become the Coffee Plant and serving violet creams to old ladies with mauve hair at Barkers of Kensington (now Whole Foods). Mix all the above with a Books for Cooks as the best library a catering student could wish for, plus a handful each of Garcia’s, Lisboa Patisserie, carnival food, The Grain Shop and 192 and you’ve got yourself a very tasty career.
On September 1,1989, The Times published my letter to the Editor, ‘Thoughts about a safer carnival’. I had witnessed a mob of revellers turn nasty and begin to throw bottles and bricks at mounted police as that Notting Hill Carnival drew to a particularly violent close. In 1992 The Hill contracted me to write Street Extravaganza about the history of the now safer, more popular Carnival. I featured the amazing Mary Donaldson’s authentic Jamaican food that she used to serve from her garden flat near Colville Square at Carnival. I still miss that grand, larger-than-life dame, one of many wonderful characters who used to define the essential Notting Hill.
ANNIVERSARY
Gaz Mayall Musician at Notting Hill Carnival
Lauren Adriana, Jewellery designer I came to Notting Hill at sixteen to attend DLD College when it was on Pembridge Square. During my first week I went and visited a friend of mine who was working at Paul Smith Westbourne House on the top floor. I was looking out
of the window when Robbie Williams appears in the window of the building opposite. He smiles, waves – then turns around and drops his pants to moon me. It was a swift induction into what life in the area could be like!
Sophie Conran Designer
I
first moved to Notting Hill in 1983 at the tender age of 18, renting a lovely first floor room with a balcony in a friend’s house on Kildare Terrace. Together we started a supper club on Thursday evenings, with me at the stove and him as the host. Our guests, now luminaries of the art and fashion worlds, paid a princely £10 per head, and brought plenty of booze to lubricate the evenings. We always spent more on the food than we ever made, but the shopping, prepping and putting the whole thing together was fantastic fun, and the evenings always tinkled along well into the very early morning.
The first time I went to Carnival was in 1976, the year the riots first broke out. I’ve never missed one since. It was a huge event but was policed badly. It was the first of its kind and unfortunately a few knock-on effects echoed out through the following years. It wasn’t really indicative of the carnival but of the political and racial tension at the time. The bulk of the change has been in the last 20 years and it has gone right up. By ‘89 my brother and I had landed a full-time pitch outside The Globe where we have been to this day. In that first year, there was just a record player and a couple of speakers. Now we have thousands of people gravitating to where we are. They hang out with us all day long as it’s a little ray of sunshine. I still really love it. It’s a fabulous multi-cultural gathering; the biggest street party in Europe and the whole world’s invited.
Samir Ceric Director, Debut Contemporary I remember vividly how I came across this location. I was sat outside 202 in September 2004 when a funny bird decided to shower me with its second nature, poo. I knew that meant I was to stay in Notting Hill for a long time. I walked down the road with my then business partner and we ‘bumped’ into our gallery’s venue at 82 Westbourne Grove and Terence Tsakok, its owner. Terence loved our energy and nine months later, we entered his retail unit, having bought the leasehold from him. Life now could not be any sweeter. Who would have thought that these ‘strange’ coincidences would have led to this extraordinary life we are living.
Derek Morrison Sommelier at Negozio Classica Once a year Notting Hill is permeated by the typical, distinct scent of fresh truffles and fine red wine for our White Truffle Week. We have wine paired truffle dinners where every dish on the menu is made with fresh truffles flown to London directly from the private Tuscan resort of Negozio’s co-owner, who also owns the renowned winery Avignonesi in Montepulciano. White Truffle Week has become a yearly classic in Notting Hill, something we and neighbourhood Epicurians look forward to participating in every year. thehillresident.co.uk 27