Like Twitter, but with food: Market Hall Victoria reviewed

The Market Hall Victoria is an international food shed opposite the station terminus. I have long hated Victoria, thinking it the most provincial part of central London. It longs for the provinces, it impersonates them, it summons them. It is odd because the station itself is beautiful: a grimy Edwardian fantasy with tall grimy chimneys and a fantastical clock. But the rest of it is painful: the ugly road to parliament; the immense new blocks with their hideous restaurants; the sad and stripy Roman Catholic cathedral, which searches for grandeur but just looks weird; the Queen’s back wall, which I marvel at, because it tells so much. Victoria is a disappointment to itself. It sags and gasps. It is a stage with the scenery removed; a road out of town. You can get a bus from Victoria to Poland, and that is the best thing about it.

But no part of London is immune to the drug of gentrification, which, as it always does, makes Victoria uglier than ever.