Brie-tish invasion: Mathew Carver to take his Pick & Cheese brand transatlantic with New York opening

Matthew Carver launched his first Pick & Cheese in Covent Garden in 2019
Matthew Carver launched his first Pick & Cheese in Covent Garden in 2019 (©Pick & Cheese)

Mathew Carver’s cheese conveyor belt restaurant Pick & Cheese will cross The Pond early next year.

Located in Shaver Hall, a new culinary destination within Manhattan’s Lord & Taylor building, the restaurant will be working exclusively with independent American cheese producers.

Overlooking Fifth Avenue, the restaurant will have a 60-metre sushi-style conveyor belt, the brand’s biggest yet.

This expansion is the result of over a year’s research with Carver and his team having made several trips to the US visiting farms, cheesemakers, and affineurs across the Northeast to learn first-hand about the region’s cheese culture.

Guests can expect the likes of St Stephen, a triple cream cheese made with Jersey milk and cream from Four Fat Fowl in the Hudson Valley; the award-winning Intergalactic from Perrystead, a soft lactic cow’s milk cheese made in Pennsylvania; as well as Jakes Gouda, a proper aged farmhouse gouda, with sweet caramel flavours and a salty punch, made in Upstate New York.

“We didn’t just want to show up and serve any old cheese,” says Carver. “We wanted to meet the people behind it — to understand the land, the milk, and the makers. What we found is an incredibly passionate, innovative community that’s making cheese every bit as exciting as what we’ve seen in the UK.”

Randy DeWitt, co-founder of The Food Hall Co, added: “I first saw Pick & Cheese in an Instagram video over dinner one night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I flew to London to meet with Mathew, and immediately knew this concept had the kind of energy we wanted for Shaver Hall. It offers an experience unlike anything New Yorkers have seen before.”

Founded in London in 2019 within KERB’s Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden, Pick & Cheese is the world’s first cheese conveyor belt restaurant and now operates further sites in Camden and Berlin.

Carver also operates venues including The Cheese Barge in Paddington and Rind in the Yorkshire Dales.