No apology for the price of excellent food
August, 2006
Speciality: Cheese and high quality items from specialist suppliers in Europe
PATRICIA MICHELSON was having a bad day’s skiing one day, 15 years ago, in Meribel. So she dropped into a little shop and bought a cheese called Beaufort – and instantly fell in love with it.
She liked it so much she brought some back to Highate with her, and found that her friends and family liked it as well. So she decided to import some, and almost before she knew it, the garden shed had become a cheese warehouse and she was delivering all kinds of cheese all over Hampstead and Highgate.
The next step was a market stall in Camden Lock and, finally, in 1991, she decided to open a little shop in Highbury Park, N5, which, she expected, she would only need to open three or four days a week. But from the first week the demand was such that it remained open every day.
“And my poor family have suffered ever since,” she told me. The business really took off when she opened the Moxon Street shop with its impressive, purpose-built, temperature controlled cheese room, in Marylebone in 2002 and she now supplies many restaurants and is thinking about the wholesale trade as well. And not just posh restaurants – the criteria is that they have to be interested in serving good cheese.
But just putting cheese on the shelf is not good enough for Patricia Michelson. “We give them a specific identity,” she explained. “For example, we buy Chambertin, which is a washed-rind cheese, sprayed with Marc de Champagne, and we give it an extra couple of washings in Marc, which gives it extra depth which is unique to our cheese.”
At the moment, in August, goats cheese is in season and there are a lot of those, so the shop has on its shelves upwards of 200 different goat cheeses, but normally there is a stock of between 120 and 150 varieties.
And it’s not just cheese that she has become interested in. Whenever anything catches her eye, and it’s something she can import efficiently it comes into the shop. So there are vegetables from Italian farmers, apples direct from English orchards, charcuterie from all over the place and bread from across the English Channel. And, yes, she agrees that it is all very expensive.
“But just look at it!” she exclaims. “Its all absolutely perfect, ready to eat, and of the highest quality, sent direct from suppliers twice a week. I look at food in a very idealistic way – I want to supply the best food that tastes good and that is good for people, and I am not going to apologise for the prices we have to charge.”
La Fromagerie also runs a café serving breakfast and lunches, and offers a host of other services and attractions from special events and picnic hampers to deliveries and a regular newsletter. Have a look at the website at
www.lafromagerie.co.uk
Matthew Lewin