Foodies acquire an appetite for 1,000-year-old Borough Market over Harvey Nicks' glamour

One has cracked windows, dripping roofs, and a pie and mash shop next door; the other has chandeliers, shelf-stackers in frock coats and the Ritz down the road. But as the stallholders of Borough Market lay out their wares today, they can at least revel in the knowledge that they are more talked about by foodies than London's grande dame of retailing, Fortnum & Mason.

After only four years, the various fine food stalls in the covered market have also surpassed Harvey Nichols and the country's biggest supermarkets in the eyes of 900 London critics writing for a new guide.

The survey also highlights the growing demands of customers for better-quality produce and to know where their food came from, and shows the rise of the small producer.

Selfridges is the most mentioned food retailer in the capital, followed by Waitrose and then Harrods. Borough Market comes in fourth for what the guide's authors described as a "place of pilgrimage" for food lovers. Fortnums came in sixth in the top 10 and was the oldest of the general food shops.

Critics' plaudits for Northfield Farm of Rutland and the Nottinghamshire-based Ginger Pig, two specialist meat retailers, led to calls for the market to be recognised. It has existed in one form or another for nearly 1,000 years.

Food scares and the growing fame of the television chef have fuelled the demand for non-mass produced foodstuffs, which Borough and other farmers' markets have tapped into.

Borough Market, by London Bridge station in south London, has seen visitor numbers on its main trading days of Friday and Saturday rise from only a few hundred to about 10,000 a week. Stallholders cautiously pointed to a renaissance of the market in the face of the apparent supremacy of the supermarkets but said it remained largely a middle-class passion.

Some of the produce costs twice supermarket prices and a sign for "chicken wrap with rocket salad" pointed to the type of customer that normally goes to the market.

Tim Wilson, 43, a farmer who runs The Ginger Pig stall, said: "People can talk to me and I can tell them exactly where the animals come from. With all the food scares that's why the market does so well."

Rupert Titchmarsh, who manages the Northfield Farm stall, said office workers often ordered food at lunchtime before picking it up on their way home. He put it down to growing affluence and the surge in demand for certain produce with the publication of a well-known cookery writer's book. "Nigella Lawson brought out a recipe for cooking gammon in cola and suddenly everyone was buying it," he said.

Despite Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury's and Waitrose all making the top 10 of the most talked-about food retailers, Richard Harden, the editor of the new guide, said there was a growing understanding that food could be worth paying extra for.

Some of the shops attracting the most compliments were established well before the supermarket era and the rise of high-quality food shops followed the restaurant revolution of the past decade.

"For those prepared to seek them out, London offers butchers, coffee merchants and wine merchants as good as any in the world," he said.

Fortnum & Masons said yesterday it had also noticed how customers had become more demanding and wanted food from small producers. Jim Corfield, food merchandise manager, said: "Suppliers of Borough Market often also supply us. We try to champion the small British producer."

How the critics rank food retailers

1 Selfridges, Oxford Street
2 Waitrose, across London
3 Harrods, Brompton Road
4 Borough Market, Borough High Street
5 Sainsbury's, across London
6 Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly (right)
7 M&S, across London
8 Harvey Nichols, Knightsbridge
9 Tesco, across London
10 Bluebird, King's Road