The rosemary comes from four streets away
Our herbs are not a supply chain. They are eleven window boxes, one flat roof, and an arrangement with a neighbour who grows more than she can use.
Tom Whitlock · Owner
The rosemary on the bagels is not from a wholesaler. It comes from eleven window boxes on Churchfield Road and a flat roof above the launderette, and it arrives in a bag-for-life on a bicycle.
How this started
Marguerite has grown rosemary on her roof for nineteen years. She grew far more than she could use and had taken to leaving bunches on the wall outside her building for whoever wanted them. We started taking them. Then we started paying for them, which she resisted for about six months.
Now there is an arrangement. She grows, we buy, and once a month we work out what it should have cost.
What it means for the bagels
Rosemary picked that morning behaves differently from rosemary that has spent four days in a chiller. The oils are still volatile, so it perfumes the salt we roll the tops in rather than just sitting on top of it. Older rosemary goes woody and tastes of pine cleaner.
It also means we are at the mercy of the weather. There was a fortnight in February with no rosemary at all, and we sold plain and seeded only. Nobody minded as much as we thought they would.
The rest of it
Dill and parsley come from the wholesale market on Tuesdays and Fridays. Mint is Marguerite's as well — she has a bed of it that is, in her words, a menace. Thyme we grow ourselves in a trough by the back door, badly.
If you grow herbs in W3 and have too many, come and talk to us. We will either buy them or trade you bagels, and most people take the bagels.
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