As we're banned from bringing meat and cheese home from EU... How to savour Britain's best deli delights - including Kate and William's favourite cheese!

Daily Mail​

27-04-2025

Pockets bulging with Brie, cases full of salami – and usually a slab of French butter stuffed in my hand luggage to smear on a baguette aboard the Eurostar home.
No trip abroad is complete without a tour de force – Supermarket Sweep-style – of a European supermarket en route to the airport or station.
As any foodie knows, there are few greater joys than the cheese counter at Carrefour, where luscious, oozy Brie de Meaux comes in wheels so big they barely fit in the trolley.
Or the charcuterie aisle in Mercadona, where you'll find hulking great jamons and strings of smoky chorizo.
They simply don't make it back home like they do on the continent. So I use every family holiday as a chance to stock up and satisfy my epicurean need for aged meats, stinky cheeses and whatever other delicious treats I can find.
But British holidaymakers hoping for a tasty supermarket haul this summer are in for a shock, due to a government ban on importing meat and dairy products from the EU.
The rules, brought in earlier this month, mean tourists returning home cannot bring back products containing meat from pigs, cows, sheep, goats or deer, as well as dairy products.
The ban, which aims to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease after a rise in cases across Europe, even applies to cheese and ham sandwiches, cakes with fresh cream and meat-filled pasta.
Mercifully, other products, such as Belgian chocolate, French champagne and German beer are exempt – but anyone found smuggling banned food faces a fine of up to £5,000.
Sacre bleu! I, for one, would have reconsidered our family holiday to Brittany this year if I'd realised my usual supermarket haul would be off-limits – and no doubt countless others would, too.
In normal times, we Brits spend a fortune on continental groceries. According to a recent report by the Post Office, 32 per cent of holidaymakers who overspend abroad cite food and drink from local supermarkets as the reason.
But fear not. There's a host of great British produce that tastes just as good – and, in many cases, better – than the European equivalents. And forget lugging it back by car, plane or train; you'll find it lovingly hand-crafted by producers up and down the country.
Here's where to get your fix of continental deli foods closer to home…
BRILLIANT BRITISH CHEESES TO SUIT ALL
'There are plenty of delicious, different cheeses being made in this country,' says Ned Palmer, a cheesemonger of 25 years' experience and author of A Cheesemonger's History of the British Isles.
'Although we lost almost all our traditional producers by the 1970s, we have recently had a renaissance based on recipes from the continent – so you're in luck.'
If you're in the mood for Brie, the soft, white mould-ripened cow's milk cheese – and more particularly the finer Brie de Meaux, which hails from the Ile-de-France region of France – then tuck into a slab of Baron Bigod (from £10, fenfarmdairy.co.uk).
Made in Suffolk, the creamy raw milk cheese has a fudgy centre and an oozy, gooey outside, perfect for slathering on crackers or a hunk of baguette.
Farmer Jonny Crickmore learned his craft from a French cheesemonger, who showed him the delicate ladling technique used to make Brie – and it boasts A-list fans in the form of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
For those craving Camembert, Ned suggests Tunworth (£12.45, nealsyarddairy.co.uk), made in rural Hampshire, which has a rich, mushroomy flavour and aroma. Or there's Corscombe, a new cheese from Hollis Mead Dairy in Dorset (£15.15), which is smooth and slightly garlicky.
If it's Swiss gruyère you're after, try Summer Field Alpine (from £9.95, thecourtyarddairy.co.uk), made in a North Yorkshire village in the summer when the cows graze outside on grass. Sharp, sweet and hard in texture, it's similar to a gruyère or comté cheese.
You could also try Lincolnshire Poacher (from £6, thecheesesociety.co.uk), which Ned describes as 'the love child of cheddar and gruyère', with both a savoury tang and fruity aftertaste.
The Wyfe of Bath (from £8, parkfarm.co.uk) from the Bath Soft Cheese Co is a great Gouda substitute for your cheeseboard, with its caramel colour, semi-hard texture and buttery flavour.
Sinodun Hill (from £15.45, nealsyarddairy.co.uk) and Perroche (from £7.25, cambridgecheese.com) will hit the spot if you're missing soft French goat's cheese.
'Perroche in particular is really fresh – you can bring it to a picnic, nibble it alongside Champagne or put it on a fig and grill it,' Ned suggests.
Instead of Spanish Manchego, there's Yorkshire-made Ribblesdale Chego (from £14.25, thecheesesociety.co.uk) which has a milky, nutty flavour and pairs perfectly with a glass of red wine or sangria.
And rather than French Roquefort, tuck into Lanark Blue (from £12.70, thecourtyarddairy.co.uk), a creamy blue-veined variety made in Scotland.
Feta fans can try the comically- named 'Fetish' by White Lake Cheese at Somerset Dairy (£6.80, whitelake.co.uk) which has been barrel-aged in brine for four months for a crumbly texture and salty flavour.
Or there's Crumbly Cheshire (available at most supermarkets; Waitrose's Belton Farm block, £3, is delicious) which is lower in salt than the traditional Greek sheep's cheese and works well on a salad in the sunshine.
Finally, for the ultimate cheese toastie, swap out Raclette for Ogleshield (from £10, nealsyarddairy.co.uk), made from Jersey cows' milk that's been washed in brine, which melts beautifully under the grill.
MOUTHWATERING CHARCUTERIE
Do not despair if, like me, your summer entertaining usually revolves around a charcuterie board, with all sorts of weird and wonderful cured meats sourced from your European travels.
'British charcuterie has come a long way in 20 years,' says Ian Whitehead who, with his wife Sue, runs the Suffolk Salami Co at Lane Farm in Suffolk, and was one of the first producers of salami and chorizo in the UK in 2005.
He swears their salami (from £3.50, suffolksalami.co.uk), flavoured with red wine and cracked black pepper, rosemary or fennel, is 'just as good if not better' than the German stuff – and I can vouch for that. Tender, piquant and succulent, it's hard to beat.
Each batch, made from the finest cuts of pork, is cured for six to eight weeks, delicately-flavoured and hung to dry until ready to eat.
'The good part about buying British charcuterie is that the animal welfare tends to be higher,' says Ian. 'And charcuterie contains a lot of lactic acid bacteria, so it's good for the gut.'
The Suffolk Salami Co also offers its take on Spanish chorizo, made from the finest-grade pimento and gently smoked for a fuller flavour, as well as coppa, or air-dried pork shoulder, which makes a mouthwatering alternative to Italian Parma ham.
Hartgrove Coppa (£5.50, therealcure.co.uk) from Dorset's The Real Cure is another great Parma swap, dry-cured in herbs and spices and air-dried for three months. Brilliant in sandwiches or wrapped around asparagus.
If it's Italian charcuterie you're craving, go to town at Somerset Charcuterie, where you'll find everything from free-range duck pancetta to wild venison peperone (from £3.84, somersetcharcuterie.com), as well as an award-winning take on coppa made with Mexican chillies.
There's also Sunday Charcuterie in Lowestoft, Suffolk, which does a tempting line in pancetta, guanciale and 'nduja (from £4, sundaycharcuterie.co.uk), all made from free range British pigs. If you're feeling indecisive, they do an antipasti board for two for £7.50.
Fans of bresaola, the cured beef from Lombardy, should try Bray Cured (from £6.50, braycured.com), where the classic bresaola – hearty slices of British heritage beef, doused in wine before being dried – is only outshone by its cacao-cured venison version.
For a continental feel, Norfolk-based Marsh Pig wraps its cured meats in paper and sells them whole (from £16, marshpig.co.uk). Try the Kalamata black olive salami – it's divine.
Even German bratwurst isn't off the menu. Yorkshire Bratwurst, made from pork reared on North Yorkshire farms, is coarse-cut and seasoned with white pepper, just like the European sausage (£8.95, gridironmeat.co.uk) and perfect in a bun with mustard.
BUTTER, YOGHURT AND DELICIOUS DESSERTS
Instead of French butter on your bread, stock up on creamy Bungay Butter (from £7.95, fenfarmdairy.co.uk), made from its grass-fed Montbéliarde and Friesian cows – or there's Coombe Castle's lightly-salted British butter, a rich yellow-gold slab.
Italy might be the home of ravioli, but you can't bring back meat or cheese-filled pasta any more – so sign up to Pasta Evangelists (from £6, pastaevangelists.com), which delivers British-made fresh pasta meal kits to your door, from beef agnolotti to lamb ragu.
When it comes to yoghurt, Tims Dairy, in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, does a delicious, authentic-tasting Greek yoghurt in honey, blackcurrant or vanilla flavours (from £2, at Asda, Budgens, Coop and Waitrose).
And if it's French patisserie you're missing, there are plenty of UK bakeries making buns, eclairs and pastry from scratch.
Try London's Le Choux (choux from £16, lechoux.co.uk) or M&S stores for its Best Ever chocolate éclair (£5.50) – bursting with British cream and truly indistinguishable from the Parisian sweet treat.