The Fudge Patch, a small shop in Greenwich Market, has been picked as one of the UK’s seven best purveyors of the sweet treat by the American monthly National Geographic.
But what makes the three-year-old shop interesting is more than its fudge.
Patrick, the owner, goes by the name ‘Patch’ (hence the name of the shop). He is the first person you see when you go into The Fudge Patch. Patrick’s enthusiasm about fudge is clear to customers the second they set foot in the shop. He greets everyone with an invitation: “Would you like to try some delicious fudge?”
After a quick sampling, curious customers are able to make their way to Shannon, who is busy making fudge at one end of the shop.
Business is brisk, with most customers succumbing to the lure of the brightly coloured squares of differently flavoured fudge, which includes salted caramel, lemon sherbet, vanilla coconut and rhubarb custard. The shop is almost never empty, with potential customers constantly going in and out, attracted by the fun nature of the space.
Those who don’t buy at least get to try every flavour for free, a point noted by National Geographic in its rundown on Britain’s best fudge shops.
Patrick, who started making fudge when he was 16 and didn’t stop for the next two decades, is appreciative of the American accolade. But he says he doesn’t put too much meaning into the National Geographic ranking. “Occasionally people just have to make an article to fill some space. That was largely what the article was but it’s great!” He adds that he always thought he was the best and that was enough for him.
So what’s the history of fudge, according to a veteran maker of the candy, which combines sugar, butter and milk into a distinctive consistency? Does the expression “Oh fudge!” really have anything to do with fudge?
Patrick tells an interesting story. “Fudge is a surname, I think it’s a Dutch surname. It was Mr. Fudge, Captain Fudge, he used to lie at port, when he came in to port he had to say ‘I’ve got X in my ship’ because he had to pay port taxes so he would lie about what’s in his ship.” That’s how the word “fudge” came to be used for things that were a bit dodgy, he added.
If hard chewy toffee went soft, Patrick continues, people would say “Oh fudge!” to indicate that it was a mistake. That was before fudge, the confectionary, was invented. Eventually, the sweet was named fudge because it was “like a toffee that went bad.”
There is lots of good fudge in The Fudge Patch and not much sign of “toffee that went bad”. Shannon and Patrick make up the core team. Shannon, says Patrick, has “also been making fudge for about a lot of her life, six years.” He finishes on a note of caustic humour: “There’s other people that work here but we don’t really like them really much.”
Life as owner of a fudge shop in Greenwich was a “happy accident, bit like fudge,” says Patrick. Before The Fudge Patch, he worked in various fudge shops. It did not seem like much of a career initially, he says. “Sharon has the same story as me. A shop would employ us – it wasn’t really a dream we just needed a job – so I got a job and mine was a weekend job because I had to get a job. And I’ve got a job in a fudge shop, seemed like a fun place to work. And it kind of cursed us, would you say cursed, because you can’t get a real job afterwards. Knock around, play with sugar and we could kind of do what we wanted for most of the day…I kept doing it because I loved it.”
But then he came to Greenwich Market, where a lot of small shops make for a cozy atmosphere. “They would have me. When you open a shop you don’t get to choose – ‘I wanna be here! I have the money!’ and then they go ‘no’, so you don’t get to choose.”
