la fromagerie

la fromagerie found itself on our list of places to try post the first exploration of my north london neighborhood with i. our first visit to la fromagerie was an impromtu lunch. outside it was a lovely warm autumn day but inside the fromagerie we were frozen (owing to the cold drafts of chees air from the cheese room). although there is lots to choose from - there are sanwiches and tarts and tortilla's my partiality for goats cheese made it easy for me to settle on the goats cheese, red pepper and butternut squash tortilla.

i had the leek corguette and ricotta tart. we dabbled into each others choices and were more than satisfied by what we had. our lunches were accompained by some tossed greens. i who has an antagonistic relationship with all things leafy and green ventured into salad territory making it a point to tell me that she was trying the greens. but sadly a couple of forkfuls in she hit a rather bitter note (probably the arugula) and abandoned the greens – i didn’t manage to tuck into all of mine but the combination of baby spinach and arugula tossed with olive oil offset the richness of the tortilla.

we both decided to split the guilt, that is dessert. however choosing it offered up a bit of a challenge. there was polenta cake, a thick homely looking carrot loaf, cheese cake, fruit tarts with a hint of frangipani, brownies…but out of all of those it was the irregular loaf of lemon and poppy seed cake dense with flecks of poppy seeds and irregular icing that caught our fancy. i must say that i and i are lucky in that there is very little aside from leafy stuff that we don’t love in common. the lemon and poppy seed cake arrived with two spoons and a neat diagonal cut with as equitable a distribution as possible (i wonder did our server thing us incapable of sharing equally?) dessert was accompanied by a cafetière of coffee for me – a very dark roast with a smooth edge and a pot of earl grey for i. the earl grey was exquisite with a hint of sweetness (a definite addition to my repertoire of earl grey teas).

be rest assured we will be back here soon.