Androuët, cheesemonger on the Rue Mouffetard since 1909

Androuët, the cheesemonger and affineur now on the Rue Mouffetard, began in 1909, when Henri Androuët, a travelling peddler, set out to introduce Parisians to cheeses from every region of France; in 1910 he opened his creamery on the Rue d’Amsterdam.

Wounded in the Great War, he came home and travelled France to meet producers. By the mid-1920s the house offered more than a hundred cheeses and opened a tasting cellar. In 1934 a restaurant devoted to cheese opened upstairs, with cheeses brought round on trolleys. Colette, Jean Gabin, Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway and Maria Callas were among its clients.

His son Pierre, who gave up architecture in the early 1930s, became an ambassador for cheese and wrote many books, among them a Guide du fromage in 1971. The house left the family in 1995; Stéphane Blohorn took it over in 2005 and in 2017 set up a workshop with five ripening cellars in Levallois.

At 134 Rue Mouffetard, in the 5th arrondissement, one of the house’s shops offers more than 300 cheeses, ripened by the house and sourced from small producers.