Portland Road W11

On the street where you live

There’s no funkier street in the Royal Borough than Portland Road. Its A-list art galleries, interior decorators, gift shops, home stores and antique shops constantly feature in Wallpaper and The World of Interiors. You could spend a morning shopping there for your new home and be sure that all your purchases passed the naff test. Woody Allen chose Portland Road and Clarendon Cross to represent Holland Park/Notting Hill in the Scarlett Johansson romcom Match Point.

“We keep having TV crews and magazine shoots turning up around here,” says culinary boutiquiste Bernadette Bishop. “They seem to enjoy the authenticity - yet then they perversely create temporary new shopfronts!” Brilliant well-established businesses like Bernadette’s Summerill & Bishop, Michael Pruskin’s 20^th century decorative arts gallery Pruskin, Virginia Bates’ antique dress shop Virginia and Sara Nickerson‘s labyrinthine antique shop Myriad are not only one-offs but run by highly individual, media-friendly characters, often of a certain 1960s vintage. They attract browsing US celebs and bankers, who fill their Long Island and Malibu deck houses with stone mushrooms, brass lanterns, Venetian mirrors and Gaudi-esque sculptures. Small witty presents are a speciality of The Cross and its foal Cross The Road, which both sell boho clothes, toys and interior decorating goodies.

You may be unable to buy a Spectator, jar of Marmite, toothbrush or even a postage stamp in this refined enclave. But you have excellent Italian deli Speck, with its ready-made dishes, smelly blue cheeses and eight varieties of olive. You can always depend too on the organic greengrocers Michanicou Bros round the corner for passion fruit, Cape gooseberries and other veggie exotica.

Foodies rely for most of their needs on busy Holland Park Avenue, with its Tesco Express, boulangerie Paul, cheese monger Jeroboams, patisserie Maison Blanc and, of course, Lidgate, the best family butchers in West London. And for recipe books there’s always the excellent Daunt Books.

But Portland Road’s epicentre remains Julie’s restaurant and winebar, where Captain Mark Phillips held his rowdy stag night before marrying Princess Anne in 1973. “We were about to host Prince Charles’ stag night before his marriage to Princess Diana until the Daily Mail blew it by revealing the venue,” recalls its Austro-Nigerian owner Johnny Ekperigin. From Julie’s alfresco tables smart locals will text their friends while keeping a close watch on the intriguing street scene. Upstairs you can enjoy a delicious ‘mod-Euro’ lunch and bottle of Bolly in one of its discreet nooks and crannies. “Guests sometimes get carried away,” admits Ekperigin, a dab hand at schmoozing guests like Naomi Campbell, Prince William, Kate Moss and Lenny Henry.

After an afternoon shopping and carousing many regulars visit the street’s health spa, The Cowshed. There you can have a St Tropez spray tan, back massage, salt scrub, collagen eye treatment or even a full Brazilian wax (ouch). But still, Portland Road, built on the site of the 19th century’s ill-fated Hippodrome racecourse, is actually more residential than commercial. “It‘s very sought after because of its unique attractions,” says estate agent Susan Metcalfe. “You can buy a three/four-bedroom Victorian terrace house for between £2.3 and £3.7 million, depending on its size, position and condition.”