London Food Markets: The Halls Run Late and the Streets Do Not

London uses one word for four different businesses, and the confusion costs people their dinner. The food halls run until eleven at night. The street markets have packed up by five.

Broadway Market in Hackney closes at five on a Saturday and four on a Sunday, and does not trade at all the rest of the week. Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden serves until eleven, Wednesday to Saturday. Camden’s food halls run to eleven every night of the week. All four are called markets.

The rule is simple once you see it. A covered hall with fixed traders is an evening. A street market with stalls is a morning. Here is which is which.

The phrase people use for most of this is street food, and in London that covers both the weekend markets and the daily food halls. They are not the same business and they do not keep the same hours, which is the distinction this page exists to draw.

The evening ones

Seven Dials Market, Covent Garden

Twenty one traders under one roof, with a booking policy that has three separate rules in it.

Seven Dials Market

Address

Earlham Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 9LX

Nearest

Covent Garden, three minutes. Leicester Square, four. Tottenham Court Road, six

Hours

Monday and Tuesday midday to 10pm. Wednesday to Saturday 11am to 11pm. Sunday 11am to 9pm

Booking

Mainly walk in, with bookings taken for tables of four or more. Outdoor tables are walk in only. The Cheese Bar takes its own bookings separately, through its own site

Standing

Twenty one street food traders and two bars, run by KERB as a social enterprise, with full step free access including a lift

How to get in

Three booking rules sit on top of each other and it is worth reading all three. Tables of four or more can be booked. Smaller groups walk in. The outdoor tables cannot be booked at all, are limited, are not covered, and close at ten, an hour before the hall does on its late nights. The Cheese Bar inside is a separate business and books through its own website. The line up includes Bleecker Burger, which took World’s Best Burger in 2026, Bad Boy Pizza Society, National Pizza Award winners, and a cheese conveyor belt at Pick and Cheese that they describe as the world’s first. Note the slow start to the week: Monday and Tuesday it does not open until midday. Dials After Dark brings live music and DJs every Friday and Saturday from seven.

Hawley Wharf food halls, Camden

The latest food in any London market, seven nights a week.

Hawley Wharf

Address

Chalk Farm Road, Camden, NW1 8AA, beside the main Camden Market site

Nearest

Camden Town, five minutes. Chalk Farm, eight

Hours

Food halls Monday to Sunday 11.30am to 11pm. Retail Monday to Wednesday midday to 6pm, Thursday 11am to 6pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 7pm, Sunday 11am to 6pm

Booking

No booking

Standing

The food halls beside Camden Market, open every day of the year except Christmas Day

How to get in

Half eleven in the morning to eleven at night, every single day, makes this the most reliable late food in the London market system. The shops beside it are the opposite and catch people out: retail does not open until midday from Monday to Wednesday and shuts at six. The whole Camden site closes only on Christmas Day, bank holidays included, which is covered properly in our Camden guide. If you are at Camden for the market, do the stalls in the day and come back here in the evening.

The morning ones

Broadway Market, Hackney

A working Victorian street market that trades two days a week and changes its stalls between them.

Broadway Market

Address

Broadway Market, London Fields, E8

Nearest

London Fields overground, four minutes. Bethnal Green, fifteen

Hours

Market Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm, fifty two weeks a year. The street itself, meaning the shops, operates 365 days a year with individual hours

Booking

No booking. Run by the Broadway Market Traders and Residents Association

Standing

A working Victorian street market, trading every weekend of the year

How to get in

Two things to understand here. The market and the street are separate: the stalls run at weekends only, while the shops along the street open all year on their own hours. And Saturday and Sunday are not the same market, with a different trader list published for each day, so a Sunday visit is not a substitute for a Saturday one. Saturday is the longer day by two hours at each end. Five in the afternoon is the latest the stalls run all week, which makes this a morning and lunch market rather than an evening one.

Borough Market, Southwark

The produce market the others are measured against.

Borough Market

Address

8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL

Nearest

London Bridge, two minutes

Hours

Varies by section and by day, which is the point. Check our Borough Market guide for the full schedule

Booking

No booking for the market itself

Standing

London’s best known food market, and the one the others are compared with

How to get in

Borough is the produce market rather than a food hall, which is why its hours behave like a market and not like a restaurant. It has its own guide on this site covering which days trade in full, what to buy and what to skip, and a separate page for the restaurants around it. Monmouth Coffee is two minutes away on Park Street and closes on Sundays, as do all three Monmouth shops.

The street food ones, which keep the shortest weeks

Street food in London is a weekend business dressed up as an everyday one. The best of these trade three days a week and the listicles print them as though they were open on a Tuesday.

Maltby Street Market

Address

Arch 46, Ropewalk, Maltby Street, Bermondsey, SE1 3PA

Nearest

Bermondsey or London Bridge

Hours

Friday 5.30pm to 9pm. Saturday 10am to 5pm. Sunday 11am to 4pm. Closed Monday to Thursday

Price

Free to walk in

Standing

Independent traders under the Victorian railway arches of the Ropewalk

How to get in

The one Londoners send people to instead of Borough, and it runs three days a week and no more. The Friday evening session is the one most guides omit entirely: a short window from half past five that is the least crowded way to eat here. Global street food from the arches, raclette through to bavette steak and tacos. It is a ten minute walk from Borough Market, so the two are a single afternoon if you get the day right.

Mercato Metropolitano

Address

Elephant and Castle, Mayfair and Wood Wharf

Nearest

Elephant and Castle, Bond Street, or Canary Wharf for Wood Wharf

Price

Free to enter

Standing

Three London sites. The Elephant and Castle original runs to 17,000 square feet

How to get in

A sustainable community food market with rotating traders rather than fixed tenants, which means the line up changes and a recommendation from two years ago may be gone. Three sites: the original at Elephant and Castle, which is the largest, a Wood Wharf site in Canary Wharf open since May 2022, and <strong>a Mayfair branch inside a Grade I listed church</strong>, stained glass and all, which is the most incongruous place to eat a taco in Britain.

Between them these are the street food London is actually known for, and the reason a visitor leaves disappointed is almost always the day rather than the cooking.

The food hall chains are the everyday version of the same idea. Market Halls runs four London sites, at Victoria, Paddington, Oxford Street and Canary Wharf, and those keep proper daily hours rather than a weekend window. They are covered on the restaurants near London stations page, along with the rule that decides them: the individual kitchens stop serving an hour before the building closes.

What to know

Halls for dinner, streets for lunch. Seven Dials and Hawley Wharf both run to eleven at night. Broadway stops at five, the Kitchens at Old Spitalfields at six. If you want to eat at a market after seven, you want a covered hall.

Monday and Tuesday are the weak days. Seven Dials opens at midday rather than eleven and closes at ten rather than eleven. Hawley Wharf retail opens at midday. Broadway Market does not run at all.

Weekend markets are two markets. Broadway publishes a separate stall list for Saturday and for Sunday. Old Spitalfields gives Thursday to antiques and Saturday to design. The day is the product.

Bookings are the exception and they are conditional. Seven Dials takes them only for four or more, never for outdoor tables, and one of its own tenants books separately. Everywhere else here is walk in.

The street and the market are different businesses. Broadway Market says so outright: the street trades 365 days a year, the market fifty two weekends. Spitalfields and Camden have the same split under different names.

Everything here was taken from each market’s own published information in September 2026 and rechecked on 2 October 2026. Trader line ups change often, so treat named stalls as a snapshot. Confirm before you travel.

Cheap eats in London puts real prices against the names every list recommends, several of which turn out not to publish one.

Cash or card, which none of them will tell you

Google lists “is it cash only” among the first questions people ask about London’s markets, and the markets themselves do not answer it.

Checked on 27 September 2026 and again on 2 October 2026: Borough Market, Seven Dials Market and Portobello Road all publish a detailed visitor page with the address, the opening hours, the nearest stations and how to get there. Not one of them says a word about how you pay.

There is a structural reason, and it is worth understanding rather than resenting. A market is not one business. It is a landlord and a few dozen or a few hundred independent traders, each making their own decision about card machines, minimum spends and whether the signal reaches their stall. The market office cannot publish a rule it does not set.

So carry some cash and expect most stalls to take cards anyway. The practical split, which no market prints but every regular knows:

Cooked food and coffee: cards, almost always. These are high volume stalls with fixed pitches and they have solved payments.

Produce, cheese, fish and the older traders: bring notes. Margins are thinner, the pitch may be temporary, and a minimum spend on a card is common.

Antiques and bric a brac: cash, and it changes the price. At Portobello in particular the figure on the label is the opening of a conversation, and that conversation goes better with notes in your hand than a card machine between you.

The one thing to avoid is arriving with neither. Cashpoints around the busy markets on a Saturday carry queues of their own, which is a poor use of the hour you came for.

Where to go next

Each of the big markets has its own guide here, and each has a catch worth knowing first. Borough Market is the produce one. Camden opens every day of the year except Christmas Day. Portobello Road is really a Friday and Saturday market. Spitalfields runs under two names on two websites whose hours disagree.

The bakeries guide covers Bread Ahead, which began in Borough Market and now runs a baking school with workshops from 25 pounds.

The restaurants around Borough Market cover sitting down properly, and the coffee guide covers the roasters, several of which are closed on Sundays.

By neighbourhood, things to do in Camden covers what is worth doing around that market once you have eaten, and Brixton is the one to see this year: Lambeth granted permission in March 2026 for the Pop Brixton site to be redeveloped and says the yard closes towards the end of the year.

Free things to do in London covers the rest of what costs nothing to walk around.

Questions we get asked

What are the best food markets in London?

Borough Market in Southwark for produce, and it has its own guide here. Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden for twenty one street food traders under one roof until eleven at night. Hawley Wharf at Camden for food halls open 11.30am to 11pm every day of the year but Christmas Day. Broadway Market in Hackney for a working Victorian street market at weekends.

Which London food market is open in the evening?

Hawley Wharf at Camden, whose food halls run 11.30am to 11pm seven days a week, and Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden, open to 11pm from Wednesday to Saturday, 10pm on Monday and Tuesday and 9pm on Sunday. Street markets close far earlier: Broadway Market stops at 5pm on Saturday and 4pm on Sunday.

Can you book a table at a London food market?

Rarely, and only with conditions. Seven Dials Market takes bookings for tables of four or more but not for its outdoor tables, which are walk in only and close at 10pm, and the Cheese Bar inside books separately through its own site. Camden, Broadway and Borough take no bookings for the market itself at all.

What days is Broadway Market on?

Saturday from 9am to 5pm and Sunday from 10am to 4pm, fifty two weeks of the year. The two days have different trader lists, published separately, so they are not interchangeable. The shops along the street trade 365 days a year on their own individual hours, which is a separate thing from the market.

Is Seven Dials Market open on a Monday?

Yes, but on shorter hours than the rest of the week. Monday and Tuesday it runs midday to 10pm, against 11am to 11pm from Wednesday to Saturday and 11am to 9pm on Sunday. The outdoor tables close at 10pm whatever the day, so on a late night they shut an hour before the hall does.

What is the difference between a food hall and a street market in London?

Hours, mostly. A covered hall with fixed traders, like Seven Dials or Camden’s Hawley Wharf, keeps restaurant hours and serves until ten or eleven at night. A street market with stalls, like Broadway Market, keeps market hours and is finished by four or five in the afternoon. The word market covers both, which is why people arrive at the wrong one.