Thompson Deli and Bakers, 2 Streatham High Road, Streatham Hill

Alright then, welcome to the Pleasuredome. Thompson's sits next door to Streatham Hill station, opposite the former Streatham site of Daily Fresh Foods mentioned in the previous post. It's an odd mix, split roughly 50/50 between Eastern European stodge on the right hand side as you walk in, and Italian delicacies on the left. Old Europe and New in one shop. So, you can get a hotdog baked in dough and the Polish equivalent of Special Brew here, but you can also get burrata, guanciale, and tiny bottles of pre-made Aperol Spritz.

The unifying theme here, I think is pleasure. Thompson's sells nothing worthy or dourly healthy. It only sells things that are a delight to eat or drink: either carbs (bread, pasta, pierogi) or fats (cheese, cake, cured meat made from the wobbly bits). The only vegetables are sat in olive oil. Many of the things it sells are orange or beige.  The shop is a bloody godsend if you're hungover - buy a donut as big as your head or an arancini filled with melted cheese and feel the lifeforce return.

I'm making Thompson's sound trashy, but that's not really the whole story. It's a shop which could sort you out for most if not all things if you were cooking a serious Italian meal from scratch. But what I like about it is that it doesn't have any of the studied, reverential feel of posher delis. There's no bollocking on about "provenance". It just sells things that taste nice. Much like an actual deli in Italy, come to think of it.

I also like Thompson's air of theatricality, of spectacle, which perhaps sometimes flies in the face of strict, dry business sense. At Christmas time, it's literally floor to ceiling with bright pink boxes of panetonne. Are they ever gonna sell that many? Errrr may be not. In the photo above you can see they've started stocking a lot of zampone - the Italian sausage that's encased in a pig's leg (trotter and all). Again, not sure how many they're going to sell, but they do look cool.

Thompson's has been in Streatham for years, and when it opened it was surely a gentrifying addition to the high street. A place where one could buy chargrilled artichokes and pecorino. But as Thompson's has stayed true, while the much of the rest of Streatham is hurtling towards the yoga, flat white and distressed homewares apocalypse, the deli feels like  an outpost of an older, perhaps more democratic Streatham. Not wanky, just nice.  There's plenty of wankers like me  in there wondering what brand of orechietti is best, but also Polish builders stopping by for a beer after work.

Should you go to Thompson's, a must buy is their biscotti amarena:

I have never, ever seen these for sale anywhere else in the UK, but they don't make a big thing out of it. Biscotti amarena are Neopolitan cakes, that are made from old sponge cake squidged together with cherry jam, and wrapped in biscuity pastry and meringue. They are absolutely fucking delicious. They're only £1.99 and would feed a family of five for a week. You can make your own, but why would you? A world of pleasure awaits at Thompson's.