Madame Fromage

Had a day in Cardiff yesterday with d.
We had plans to hit John Lewis, HMV, Carluccios...familiar friendly notes from our long association with strip-mall Britain.

Arriving on the bus though, we kinda mutually decided to seek out places that weren't on the beaten track.

As it happened, we didn't have to go far. We went to the Castle Arcade - one of a good handful of quaint, tight warrens of commerce with more than a hint of Victoriana to them.

We popped into Price's Sweet Shop - a real old-fashioned looking British tuck shop - and picked up some sugar-free boiled sweets and licorice toffees for my dad. We strolled along and found TroutMark...

TroutMark is a dangerous place for a bibliophile. I used to go there whenever I could afford it as a teenager - often with my pal Sian - and come home with armfuls, bagfuls of second hand books of good quality and, in a pre-Amazon age, often more than a few of them gems of hard-to-find fiction.

It was fantastic to be able to report that a) it had survived the recession so far, and was still crammed to the gills with great quality books. Ahem...

We came away with armfulls, bagfulls of great books, which is always enough to put a giant smile on my face.

"Lunch?" I said.
"Where?" said d. I shrugged.

"Well, there's this place," said d.
Madame Fromage was somewhere we'd passed several times before - usually in a hurry to get to somewhere else. Now though, we stopped and investigated. Phenomenal cheese counter - check. Home-made looking pies with enticing flavours - check. Moderately culturally weird bagpipe music on the speakers - check. Specials board of truly irresistible delights - check.

We sat down.
I started with a bowl of the special butternut squash and sweet potato soup, and followed it with a goat's cheese and red onion marmalade galette (a thin folded crepe, essentially). d had Welsh rarebit.

It's important to understand that whenever either of us has ordered Welsh rarebit anywhere before, it's been fundamentally disappointing. Either made on thin, processed white bread, or ungenerous with cheese, or overpowering in terms of the mustard content.

Welcome to Madame Fromage, please leave your preconceptions at the door, pilgrim, cos we're gonna take GOOD care of you here...

Two big slabs of fresh, crusty, home-made-feeling bread, generosity of cheese, and a mustard layer that looked as if it would blow your head off, but which was actually sublime, subtle and kept you making yummy noises and coming back for more.

My soup was warming but not claggy, well-flavoured and accompanied by a range of - again, home-made-feeling - breads: olive, tomato, walnut and crusty white.

The galette...
Oh god, the galette. The galette was like something from a different dimension, sent here to reward reeeeeeallly good boys and girls for Christmas. The thin crepe was perfectly golden brown, the goat's cheese warm and unctuous with just the right sharpness to match its own creamy texture - AND stand up to the sweet and sharp beauty of the marmalade. I saved some of it for "dessert" - because of course (and at this I have a tendency to start kicking things) I wasn't allowing myself to eat any of their incredible looking desserts, cakes or sweet crepes.

All this, plus soft drinks and a bottle of gold medal winning bottle of cider, was just £32...so we left entirely full and more happy than we'd thought imaginable...

We're going back on Friday, to celebrate a day off with more Madame Fromage goodness...

Go. Just take my word for it. Go now...