La Fromagerie, Marylebone

La Fromagerie
2 - 4 Moxon St
Marylebone
W1U
020 7935 0341
www.lafromagerie.co.uk

by Armand Croissant

Feed me, O muse of breakfasts, with your nutritious inspiration. I do not mind that your sisters, who do not like you because you can eat anything and still fit into your toga and attract knowing glances from Apollo, are ignoring me.

Sing of cheese and fish, and other items not strange to the well-tended breakfast table. Sing of the dense, ripe, rich smells that pile up in the abundance of La Fromagerie, on a quiet weekday morning in Marylebone. Black-clad acolytes, silent, smiling, flit around a long, low table made from a sacred oak. Initiates, well-dressed ladies, bohemians, sit around it, murmuring of subjects unknown to lesser beings: they talk of yoga, of painting, and the three-forty five back to Berkshire.

A white pot of tea, a teabag peeping lasciviously from out of its lid, is placed before me; it tastes of the smoke of incense, refreshing, pious. We order the sacraments: I wonder, briefly, whether we will be offered the mysterious, vision inducing mushrooms of the Eleusinian mysteries. We are, instead, offered bread. I have gravadlax and poilane cheese – eating the thin, sexy slices mixed with the creamy, mystical lactate is an action close to ecstasy, the crispness of toast rounding it off prosaically but nicely. Dark-eyed Katerina has the Swiss Farmhouse breakfast – cured meats of distinction, apple, and a soft cheese, which I sample when she is not looking, and pronounce excellent.

Afterwards, we browse in the shop, and I am persuaded to buy a chunk of truffle brie – a cheese so delicious, so light, so exciting, that it is like constantly eating chocolate and not feeling sick. Too soon I have to leave, my song is over, and back in the bustling highways I thank the muse of breakfasts for such a haven.