The Fine Cheese Co is one of those shops a foodie can't live without. Not only do they serve fine cheese, but they also sell great wine, jams, preserves, crackers, ham and many other delicacies that have nothing in common with their supermarket equivalents.

The Venue
The Fine Cheese Co is housed in an old shop with a black and white chequered floor, a marble fireplace covering the bar, wooden shelves and all the charm of past decades. However, there is modernity here as well. To start, the walls are painted baby blue and this is also the colour of the large table and modern plastic chairs where customers can sit. If it's a fine day, you can also sit outside, though you will find this area occupied by people relaxing here for a while.

The People
The Fine Cheese Co is almost always very busy. When the customers are not locals, there’s plenty of tourists coming in, since the place looks elegant and old-fashioned enough to be mistaken for a tourist attraction. The clientele is varied, with older folks mixing with couples in their twenties. The only common thing is that everyone eats pretty fast and leaves right after as the place is too small for you to sit down for hours of conversation.

The cheese room and the dining area are separate but the rooms are adjacent and there's no door. Surprisingly, there is no strong smell of cheese in the dining room, and the crowd of shoppers remains almost completely separate from those sitting down to grab a bite.

The Food
There are almost too many ingredients to choose from, but their dishes stick to tradition. You can get regular sandwiches or order one of the daily specials. There’s meat, fish and vegetarian sandwich fillings to choose from. The first ones (£3.50 to £4.50) span from West Country BLT to cranberry chicken and lamb and aubergine. Within the fish sandwiches (£3.85 to £4.50) you can pick from line caught bonito tuna, crayfish tails and smoked salmon. The vegetarian options (£3.50 to £4.50) are just as good. Keen’s unpasteurised traditional cheddar and the hummus with roasted peppers is good but the real star is the lemon artichokes on camaillou bread with goat cheese and walnuts.

The hot toasties (£4.25) provide a selection equally rich in quality ingredients. There's bacon and brie, buffalo mozzarella, croquet monsieur (traditional boiled West Country ham with Dijon mustard and gruyere with a choice of bread) and they're all delicious. Within the specials, you can choose from a few dishes like oak-smoked Scottish salmon and crayfish with cucumber, tomato and caper salsa or fresh Cornish crab with capers, gherkin and mayo sandwich.

For the morning or the mid afternoon, they also serve a good variety of tea cakes, brownies, elaborate mini muffins and homemade bakewell tarts, and they're all beautifully presented. Minghella ice cream is also available for the kids and adults alike.

The Drink
Walking around the shop you will see plenty of wine bottles, but the cafe section of The Fine Cheese Co does not advertise those to its customers. You can still pick one up, take your lunch to go and enjoy both at home. Otherwise, you can opt for a fruit juice. They are not freshly squeezed in the house but the brands they sell are a guarantee of quality. You can get a James White organic apple juice, a good selection of Belvoir Fruit Farms cordials, the organic Feel Good bottles or why not try a spicy tomato juice? Any of these will go very well with your sandwich and keep things healthy.

The Last Word
Try it first and if you like it buy it. You can get most ingredients from the shop and there is no better way to get fine groceries than to taste them first. Everything is of quality though, so you do not need to sample the whole menu before deciding what to eat.

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