Androuet

Henri Androuët began as a traveling cheese peddler for the dairy company Gervais before deciding, in 1909, that Parisians deserved to taste the full range of French regional cheeses rather than the handful commonly sold in the capital. He opened his own crémerie on rue d'Amsterdam the following year, in 1910, and traveled the French countryside himself, seeking out small producers and bringing back relatively young cheeses to mature in his own cellar rather than simply reselling what producers delivered ready-to-eat. That practice — buying cheese young and controlling its aging in-house — made Androuët one of the first true retailer-affineurs in Paris, a distinction that shaped how the shop, and later the wider trade, approached cheese retail. Through the 1920s, as the shop's selection grew past a hundred varieties, its tasting cellar became a regular meeting point for Parisian cheese enthusiasts, and in 1934 Androuët opened a full restaurant built around cheese, drawing a fashionable Paris clientele. Henri's son Pierre, who had originally trained in architecture, took over the business in the 1930s and continued building its reputation; by the 1950s father and son were widely regarded among France's foremost master cheese affineurs. The business left family ownership in 1995, and since 2005 has been led by Stéphane Blohorn, who opened a dedicated 250-square-meter aging facility with five specialized cellars in Levallois in 2017. Androuët today operates twelve locations, including three outside France.