The London Traveler

In the heart of St James’s, you’ll find one of London’s best cheese shops. Some people say it’s the best, though I prefer to see it as a sort of Arsenal v Man U match versus Neal’s Yard – they’re both great outfits but you never know which one will win this match. And they tend to have slightly different supporters.

Paxton & Whitfield, at 93 Jermyn Street, announces its name in golden lettering across the bressumer, and the slightly yellow light inside illumines huge wheels of cheese and even hams hanging from the ceiling. It looks like you might imagine a cheese shop to have looked in Dickens’s time – and indeed it is a hundred years old. (And that’s just the shop – the firm claims to go back to 1742!)

If you’re a gourmet looking for a souvenir you couldn’t come to a better place. Buy yourself some potted Stilton  – you can use the ceramic pot long after you’ve eaten the cheese – or a jar of fruit cheese (like a very dense jam), or a meat terrine. To wash it down, buy yourself a bottle of vintage ale, or Paxton & Whitfield’s own ‘No 93′ English ale.

Winston Churchill apparently said a gentleman wouldn’t buy his cheese anywhere else. But even if you’re a bounder or an outright cad (or like me, just part of the fifty per cent of the human race who are disqualified by chromosomes from being gentlemen) Paxton & Whitfield is still an outstanding cheese shop.

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