Indie Culture

by Craig Sams

When my brother Gregory and I opened Ceres Grain Shop in 1969’s Portobello Road, people who were into ‘brown rice and lentils’ at last had a one-stop shop dedicated to their requirements. For the first time in Britain, it was now possible to purchase rare and exotic foods like tahini, tamari, brown rice, whole grains, aduki beans, pulses, miso, seeds and sea vegetables as well as organic fruit, vegetables and bread.

Ceres thrived. By the mid-1970s we were wholesaling