When only a pork pie will do

We love living in Manhattan.  Five minutes from our door there's a row of restaurants selling pretty much every cuisine under the sun.  We are utterly spoilt for choice when it comes to eating out, and the only taxing part is the choosing, and having the discipline to stay in once in awhile... 

But every now and again, maybe on a cold or rainy day, or maybe when one of us is feeling a bit homesick, or maybe just for the hell of it as we did last Sunday, we will find ourselves by 'accident' in the West Village at a shop on Hudson Street that's done out like a 1950s English grocers.

Forever England...

To give you an idea of the kind of territory we're in, the West Village is not just any old run of the mill neighbourhood; the grocery shop is a couple of streets away from this:

We're talking seriously chi-chi.  But Myers of Keswick is resolutely, self-consciously, old world.

I could tell you we go there for the tea...

... or the sweets we used to eat as children...



 ...or the rather fab brown betty teapots...

... or the inevitable tins of beans...

... or the syrup and treacle....


...but none of that is quite it really.  We have our own private dance in this shop, Mr. P and I, where I will tell him that I'm there for the Fairy Liquid (I find the washing up liquid here a bit cloying) and he will tell me that he's there for the marmite.  But we both know why he's really there.  And that's just fine.

Me?  I'm there for the custard....

(And just in case you're curious, we have no affiliation with the store, but I really feel we should have.  For the amount we spend in there, we must be entitled to some shares by now...)

C.x