Foodie thoughts

MONTPARNASSE IN MYTHOLMROYD

It’s a warm, sunny morning and I’m wandering around a market by a church, picking up plump Marzano tomatoes, Poblano peppers and Parisian prunes. There are five varieties of new potatoes and four olds, Romanesco broccoli, multicoloured squash, Amalfi lemons and artichokes. It’s easy to imagine I’ve jumped the Covid queue and Easyjetted to the SaintGermain markets but I’m actually in the yard next to St Michael’s Church in Mytholmroyd.

Liam Laprell worked as a schoolboy at Holts, the legendary greengrocer in Hebden Bridge and loved it. “I’ve always wanted to come back to it,” he says, filling a customer’s bag with chives and kale.

He started in May 2019 selling veg boxes to local pubs and cafes and in March 2020 took a pitch in the yard by the church: “Then the pandemic struck so I ended up delivering them to folk who couldn’t get out.”

But he’s back, with renewed enthusiasm, as are his customers. “I remember walking round the amazing street market in Île de Ré and seeing ten different kinds of fine beans and thinking – I’d love to do that back home. I buy seasonally – you won’t find strawberries on my stall in December, but I sold salsify through the winter and coming soon, asparagus from Spilmans in Thirsk. It’s been a revelation – I didn’t know there’d be a demand for cobnuts from Kent here in the Calder Valley.

“At the start it was just me selling out of the back of my van and now there are five of us.”

As I pop a bag of Roscoff rose onions and beautiful Amalfi lemons into my bag, I’m one of the converted. “I was aiming for a French market vibe,” says Liam. And on a warm sunny morning in May, for Mytholmroyd read Montparnasse.

■ Find Valley Veg next to St Michael’s church on Saturdays between 8am and 12.30pm.