La Fromagerie

Marylebone.


Half filled with cheese chambers, oranges, cakes and wild pork sausages, the other half with hold ladies wearing feather hats seemingly displeased about the lack of any servant kissing their hand.

And always a queue. And always that couple, or maybe two, who will sit, and enjoy watching the queue get longer as they sip their last glass of wine, never actually lifting their heads from the civilised but elegantly animated conversation they are having, but quite apparently gaining satisfaction out of the corner of their expensively adorned eye. One can tell by how the sips get smaller, the swashing in the mouth more languid. How long can you make that glass last?

So, it's amazing cheese. Amazing. One platter comes with cheese and honey and I must say, that is probably the best thing to happen to Saturday brunch since eggs Benedict. Maybe there is something in a person who is willing to pay 25 quid for a cheese brunch that makes them haughty. Haughty they are. Like the Gatsby's. Conversation is subdued. Until we get there and make it loud. I know the waiter makes funny faces to us standing in the queue about those slow wine sippers, maybe even a spiteful comment but he does the same about us loud talkers. I have seen him do it. Do they like us or do they know how to hide disdain?

There is something beautiful in the clash of primordial and refined, which becomes apparent in this restaurant. One is viewing wine enthusiasts off for a cheesy lunch, waiting in line, having to stake out and defend their place the old fashioned way (no reservations, no putting names on no lists) and one gets to watch them watching the slow wine sippers, smelling the cheese chamber and balancing their pre brunch glass of wine. It's so refined a place you may start on your bottle even before you are seated, making it a lot more difficult to fight the primordial urge to pour that last sip of wine down the throats of those slow wine sippers or, more civilized already, defending your place in line by pushing. Pushing is not ok. One is to gently sway and delicately inquire about a particularly special ingredient of the displayed cheese related salad and hope the old ladies waiting to be hand kissed won't notice. But they do. Thus, charmingly one waits, making this a queue, not a line.