The Store for Ladies Who Lunch

Fortnum and Mason, 2003

Fortnum and Mason, 2003

I went to Fortnum and Mason on Piccadilly earlier. I met a friend there as we had decided to buy a birthday present for somebody in the store. It’s a strange mix of the old and the new. The world-famous food-hall sells some of the finest foods around – the chocolate and cheese counters are a world of their own and I could spend all day there – and yet it also stocks some of today’s staples (corn flakes seems quite prominent). There is a wide variety of people shopping in the store. You can see the tourists and those who, like me, felt slightly out of place mixing with the kind of ladies who lunch at The Ritz (just along Piccadilly). Service is, as you would expect, excellent and the delightful lady on the chocolate counter was very helpful indeed (unfortunately at those prices I imagine you would have to be buying a lot to be allowed to try them). Sometimes I would really like to be transported back to the days when William Fortnum and Hugh Mason founded the store in 1707. William used to work at Buckingham Palace and for generations there were connections with The Palace. There are echoes back to those times in the store. It really is an interesting place.

On this day…