Black Liverpool and Its Food in Toxteth, Granby and Lodge Lane (2026)

Walk down Granby Street on a Saturday and you can read a whole history in the shop fronts. Liverpool holds one of the oldest Black communities in Britain, settled over generations around Liverpool 8, and Toxteth is where that story has stayed rooted. The area has known good years and hard ones, and through all of it the food shops, the kitchens and the community halls have carried on, quietly doing the work of keeping people fed, welcomed and connected.

Food is a large part of how that belonging is kept alive. It is in the sacks of rice and the seasoning a grocer knows to stock because the neighbourhood asks for it, in the halal butcher who cuts your meat the way you like, in the barber who has known your family for a decade. These are ordinary exchanges, but together they make a place. This is the living food map of Black Liverpool, and it is best understood by the people and the counters that make it up, week after week.

October brings Black History Month, and there is no better time to walk these streets with fresh eyes. What follows is a look at the community organisations and the businesses that give the area its character, told with respect for how long they have been serving and how much they mean to the people around them.

The Heritage of Black Liverpool and L8

Liverpool has one of the oldest Black communities in the UK, with roots reaching back generations and long centred on Liverpool 8, the postcode most people simply call L8, and the district of Toxteth within it. It is a community with deep local history and a strong sense of place, and its everyday life has always been gathered in the streets around Granby and Princes Road. To understand the food of Black Liverpool you have to understand this, that it grew up in one closely held corner of the city and has stayed there, so the shops, kitchens and salons are not scattered but clustered, within an easy walk of one another.

That closeness is the reason the area works the way it does. A grocer, a butcher, a community hall and a barber can all sit within a few minutes of each other, and the same families have used them for years. It gives L8 a texture you feel as soon as you arrive, of a neighbourhood that has looked after its own for a very long time.

The Granby Street and Lodge Lane Hub

The two streets that carry most of this life are Granby Street and Lodge Lane. Granby has long been the community's high street, a place for provisions, for a butcher, for the community centres, and for the everyday business of the neighbourhood. Lodge Lane runs nearby and adds its own busy mix of grocers, food shops and, above all, hair salons and barbers. Between them, these two streets hold the densest gathering of Black owned and community serving businesses in the city.

It makes for an easy afternoon on foot. You can pick up your groceries and visit a butcher on Granby, walk over to Lodge Lane for your hair, and call in on a community centre on the way. The whole hub sits inside Liverpool 8, so nothing is far, and much of what you need is here.

The Community Organisations That Hold the Area

The community associations of L8 are the backbone of Black Liverpool, the places where people gather, mark occasions, seek support and share food. The African Caribbean Centre Liverpool is one of the best known, a community centre and venue that hosts events for the area. It holds a 4.6 rating on Google from 12 reviews, and you will find it at 1 Amberley Street, Liverpool L8 1YJ.

The area is home to several diaspora communities, each with its own association. The Liverpool Somali Community, a registered charity and community centre with a cafe, is a genuine anchor for Somali residents and a welcoming place to eat, rated 4.9 on Google from 19 reviews at 57 Granby Street, Liverpool L8 2TU. The Merseyside Sudanese Community Association, a registered charity that has served the Sudanese diaspora since 2017, is rated 4.2 on Google from 5 reviews and is based on Beaconsfield Street, Liverpool L8 2UU. The Nigerian Community Association, which runs events and supports Nigerian families across the city, is rated 4.0 on Google from 8 reviews and is based at Windsor House, 64 Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool L8 7LF. If you would like more background on the food these communities cook, our guides to Caribbean food, Nigerian food and Somali food are good places to start.

The Food Shops and Grocers

For groceries, Granby Street and Lodge Lane are where the neighbourhood shops. Granby Supermarkets is one of the anchors of Granby Street, a long-standing community store selling groceries and Caribbean hot food, and shoppers value it as the dependable local for African and Caribbean provisions. It holds a 4.5 rating on Google from 66 reviews at 83 Granby Street, Liverpool L8 2XA.

Over on Lodge Lane, Green Mountain is a halal grocery stocking the store cupboard staples, spices and ingredients the surrounding communities cook with, rated 4.6 on Google from 28 reviews at 110 to 112 Lodge Lane, Toxteth, Liverpool L8 0QN. J and I International Store combines a halal grocer with a butcher counter, so you can pick up your meat and your groceries in one visit, rated 4.4 on Google from 59 reviews at 101 Mulgrave Street, Liverpool L8 2TD. Across the wider city there is also Matta's International Food on Bold Street, the roughly forty year old institution known for world foods from across the globe, worth the trip if you are in the centre.

The Butchers

Halal meat is easy to come by in L8. The Granby Halal Butcher is a halal butcher in the heart of Granby, a handy stop for meat cut the way the community wants it, rated 4.8 on Google from 4 reviews at 146 Granby Street, Liverpool L8 2US. J and I International Store, mentioned above for its groceries, also runs a butcher counter, which makes it a useful single stop for a full shop at 101 Mulgrave Street, Liverpool L8 2TD.

The Kitchens and Places to Eat

Food to eat, rather than take home, is part of the picture too. Granby Supermarkets serves Caribbean hot food alongside its groceries, a reliable stop for a plate on the go. Several of the community centres serve food as well, with the Liverpool Somali Community and its cafe on Granby Street a welcoming place to sit and eat. For a proper sit-down meal, the wider Toxteth area is home to Desta, the acclaimed Ethiopian restaurant loved for its food and its traditional coffee ceremony, and one of the standout kitchens in this part of the city.

The Hair Salons and Barbers

Lodge Lane is the street for Afro hair and barbering, and its salons are as much a part of community life here as the food shops. Rasta Barbers is a Lodge Lane fixture, well trusted for Afro hair and barbering, with customers reporting more than fifteen years on the street. It holds a 4.8 rating on Google from 53 reviews at 51 Lodge Lane, Liverpool L8 0QE. A little further along, 1st Choice Hair Cutz has been trading for over eleven years and remains a long-standing pick for Afro hair, rated 4.2 on Google from 79 reviews at 151 Lodge Lane, Toxteth, Liverpool L8 0QQ. Between them they show how a good barber becomes an institution, somewhere regulars return to for years and bring the next generation along in turn.

Where to Find Black Liverpool Food and Shops

The whole hub sits inside Liverpool 8, with Granby Street and Lodge Lane at its core. It makes for an easy afternoon, groceries and a butcher on Granby, hair on Lodge Lane, and a community centre or a plate of hot food in between. Ratings and reviews here are as at our August 2026 verification, and small shops change their hours, so a quick call before you travel is always worth it. To find more African and Caribbean food shops near you or to look up African and Caribbean restaurants near you, African Stores lists them across Liverpool and the rest of Merseyside wherever you are.