How mangoes became London’s hottest commodity

For seven months of the year, Sohil drives Ubers, patiently ferrying around the good folk of London to where they need to go. But when the Alphonso mangoes of the Maharashtra region of India ripen, Sohil promptly undergoes a transformation of his own. He goes into mango mode. From April through September each year, Sohil devotes himself to selling the fruit, renting out a small stall in a corner of a greengrocer’s near his home in Tooting to coincide with the annual mango season.

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Alphonso, Kesar, Ratnagiri: posing proudly beside a throne of yellow boxes, a beaming Sohil explains the varieties of Indian mangoes he sells. “I will give you information regarding the Pakistani mango,” he continues, namely that they are not yet ripe, but once the season begins in June he will have them in abundance, fresh and golden and ready for the local Pakistani population to devour.

There are many places to find fresh Indian mangoes in the capital, if you know where to look. It’s possible to get them in Kingsbury, in Whitechapel, anywhere with a big south Asian population, really — but for decades, the spot to go to in London has been Tooting, the heavily south Asian area where rows of Indian grocers front their shops with red and yellow crates each year. 

The arrival of Indian mangoes each May is a feverishly anticipated event. Food writers like Nicola Lamb have even created mango maps, plotting out everywhere the fruit can be bought. And as soon as they touch down on London soil, a thriving market of WhatsApp dealers clicks into gear: hooking Alphonso aficionados up with the first of the crop directly, fast, so long as they can foot the bill.

Unlike their supermarket cousins, Alphonsos have a rich, almost fragrant quality to them. Their deep amber flesh tastes of saffron or, to put it in less poetic terms, the perfumed lovechild of a cantaloupe melon and a Solero. Those with the right connections (and the appetite for large shipments) charter them from India directly, tracking numbers and all.

But this year, there’s a problem. While America’s war in Iran has had many effects, one unexpected consequence has been to throttle the usual mango supply routes. Shipments to London typically stop off in Dubai or Qatar,  but fewer flights, the surging price of jet fuel and the fact that cargo planes are (for some reason) prioritising other goods mean that mangoes are harder and costlier than ever to get hold of, sending London’s sellers into a panic.