For 40 years, Finns of Chelsea has been a staple of the community. Tucked away behind the King’s Road on the tiny Chelsea Green triangle, it’s a deli, restaurant and caterer for the neighborhood’s sloanes and celebs. Sit on the bench beneath the green canopy long enough and you might be invited to feed the Household Cavalry horses a carrot, or glimpse Sophie Dahl perusing the salad counter or Matthew Macfadyen ordering coffee. The late, great Maggie Smith was also a regular; but what makes Finns so special is that it’s less a place to be seen, and more a place to be part of.
“Our typical customer likes good food and loves entertaining. They have an ‘open heart, open hearth’ approach, and they elect to be generous,” owner Julia Bannister tells Broadsheet. She has been running the shop since 1985, creating “fresh food you can take home and call your own”. Not only was Finns the second-ever deli to open in London, but Julia also pre-empted the shift towards home-cooked meals without the home-cooking. “People used to be embarrassed – they’d come in and say, ‘the oven’s broken’ or ‘the cook’s away’”. When Finns started making mince pies, parents would ask them to make them “less perfect” so they could pass them off at school fetes.
Finns mini mince pies have become the deli’s festive staple. They’re about the size of a 50p coin, and while Bannister jokes that they started small because she was too mean to give away full-size mince pies at the annual Chelsea Green carol concert, it’s also because they proved incredibly popular as bite-sized canapes. So popular, in fact, that they make and sell around 9,000 every year. “People travel for miles to get them: this year, we had someone from Arizona take home boxes and boxes; masses go to the mountains in France for the ski season.”
Like the mince pies, the recipes are always seasonal: in winter, Finns’s “get-well” chicken and orzo broth is a best seller. Perhaps the ultimate testament to Finns is that customers often lean on the shop in the hard times as well as the good; people frequently fill the deli’s recognisable green tote bags for loved ones in hospital in need of restorative, nourishing food.
Behind the scenes, the chefs are a close-knit team of talented women, of whom Bannister is fiercely proud. She uses the word family, and she means it: she originally hired Marisa, who makes the mince pies, to help with childcare when her now-adult children were little. “The team is the thing I’m most proud of – being able to employ young people from different walks of life. They all come together with a love of food. It’s brilliant.” Staff have gone on to launch food businesses such as ByRuby and Lune + Wild, with Julia’s whole-hearted support.
Walk-ins are welcome until December 22.
Finns of Chelsea
4 Elystan Street, SW3 3NS.
