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Urban Garden Fair: The East Asian Market in London Two Friends Built from Nothing
- NOVA ESEA
- Aug 20
- 5 min read
Three years ago, Angie and Irene went to look at a venue in south London and got lost on the way. It was not near a station. It was not near anything much. They booked it anyway, then spent the weeks before their first market worrying that nobody would turn up.
Fifty-odd markets later, they still run one there.
Two colleagues who left the same job
Angie and Irene both moved from Hong Kong about three years ago, and they met at work before either of them thought about running markets. Their employer at the time worked with Hong Kong communities in the UK, which is where the idea started. When they left, they left together.
Neither had done anything like it in Hong Kong. Irene had an office job. What she did have was a head for numbers, which is how the company ended up split the way it is now.
I'm more messy on numbers, so she's the expert. I'm more good at brainstorming or ideas. I'll throw some crazy ideas to her and then she'll say, you have to think first.
Angie had spent a few years in Taiwan before London, some of it working as a trader herself. She had stood behind a table on a bad day. That turns out to matter quite a lot when you are the one renting the tables out.
Ask them whether either would have done this alone and neither hesitates.
No. I would become an office lady. Definitely not doing my own business.
Why an East Asian market, not a Hong Kong one
London already has a Chinatown. It has had one on Gerrard Street since the 1970s, and it leans Cantonese, which is exactly the point they keep coming back to: it represents one part of a much wider region, and it has been asked to stand in for all of it.
As Hong Kong people, we love travel. We love Japan. We love Korea. So it's a really good chance to bring all the East Asian culture in one place, to show there's something more than Chinatown.
Their stalls now come from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China, with Vietnamese and Thai traders too. There is also a commercial argument underneath it, and Angie makes it without dressing it up.
They know Japan, they know Korea. But they don't know what Hong Kong is. So if we use Japan and Korea to attract them, then we can sell Hong Kong as well.
It is rare to hear a founder say it out loud. Japan and Korea bring the crowd in. Once the crowd is there, the Hong Kong stalls get their turn.
What you'll find at an Urban Garden Fair market
Twenty or more stalls on a typical day, free entry, dogs welcome, music on. Matcha desserts, takoyaki, street food, drinks, handmade goods and craft. Angie's ambition for anyone walking in is smaller and more specific than experiencing the culture. She wants you to eat something you have never eaten.
Last time I gave out a free sample of durian to a UK lady. She doesn't like it, but at least you try. You've heard of the king of fruits all the time, but you never tried it. So why not?
The Hong Kong beef offal gets the same treatment. A little frightening for locals, she says, and really good.
The traders who stayed
The part they are proudest of is not a number; it is one man with a food truck. He traded with them for a year or two, then took a permanent shop at the same site. He sells Hong Kong street food, and the queue on a Saturday says the rest. "We know that the community loved him, so he could have a store here."
Getting to this point has been less charming than it sounds. Venues are the hard part, and Angie has been blunt about it elsewhere: they have sent over a hundred emails to get a handful of replies, and they have had to learn UK tax from scratch on top of it.
"It tasted like my grandma's"
The message that stayed with them came from a visitor from Malaysia. She had eaten something at the market and wrote to tell them it tasted the way her grandmother used to make it.
At least when you are far away from home, you have some connection, and then you don't lose your heritage.
Irene, who arrived in London three years ago knowing this city and almost nobody in it, puts what she got out of it more plainly.
Every friend I have in London, it's from the market. It's from the business.
What's next for Urban Garden Fair
Angie wants a festival: Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese sections, workshops, screenings, something you attend rather than shop at. Irene's version is more restless.
I hope we can run like a circus, so we can go around the whole UK, or maybe someday we will go to Paris.
Ask what they would tell themselves three years ago, standing lost outside a venue they were about to book anyway.
Don't think too much. Just do it. The time is now.
Have you been to Urban Garden Fair, or is it on your list? Tell us below 👇
🎥 Check our interview video below
Find Them
📍 Markets across London and beyond.
Next up: Mid-Autumn Fair, New Cross (5 to 6 Sept) and Canary Wharf (12 to 13 Sept)
🕣 Usually 12pm to 6pm, free entry, pet friendly
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