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Cafe - Now OPEN!

We have just converted the back of our shop into a Parisien style cafe. Our Cafe du Monde coffee and french Valrhona chocolate are already receiving high praise from, amongst others, Martyn Nail - executive chef at Claridges London. Locally made cakes are also available as well as our La Gosse lemonades and our local Ludlow Vineyard apple juice. (see, not all French!)

Valrhona Chocolate bars

We have always been proud and privileged to work with some of France's finest artisans and Nick and Judith Gifford from Tea Together, based in St-Remy-Au-Bois in Northern France are typical of the sort that get us excited. By word of mouth we were made aware of there outfit, and the deeper we dug, the better the story got. Despite being head-hunted by the world's most exclusive hotels (Claridges, The Dorchester, Mandarin Oriental, The Berkeley, British Airways first class, and elsewhere) the Giffords remain fiercely un-compromising in terms of their methods. 'Mass produced' is not done. The recipe is simple; they buy the best fruit, then the best sugar, then employ a terrific chef to boil them together to there specification. The result stops you in your tracks: purity or flavour, rustic yet with finesse and above all a true representation of preserved fruit. Judith explains:

“Erase from your brain all notions about jam that you have from the shop-bought variety,the big producers can always do smooth, bright, bland and tidy much better than you can. So don't waste precious cooking time fishing out the pips, straining or trying to achieve a rigor-mortis set. Instead, consider the fruit you have chosen to immortalize (well, for a little while, anyway) as jam. What is it exactly about this perfume, this taste, this texture, that does it for you? Aim to end up with a jam that has character, vibrancy, individuality, and that gives back to you, in spades, what it is you love about that fruit.”

Soon to be served with freshly baked croissants in our cafe.