Ham as in Ma'am..
LA FROMAGERIE Team Producer Visit; June 2026
Emmett's Hams were a favourite of the Queen Mother, holding a Royal Warrant for over 36 years. Established in 1820, Emmett's is the oldest artisan ham and bacon producer in the UK, known for its Suffolk Black Ham. The ham is marinated in Nethergate Suffolk porter beer, giving it a unique depth and flavour.
Date for your Diary: Thursday 8 October Mark will be at LA FROMAGERIE Marylebone with his exquisite hams. We will be tasting smoked & unsmoked hams alongside some of their award winning speciality hams, Suffolk Black ham, orange dried apricot & fig, black peppered & Fennel
Do stop by & say hello!
Emmett’s Store, Peasenhall Suffolk
Our head chef, Alessandro Grano, Marylebone shop manager, Maria Gomes and Max, took a train on a sunny June Friday to Darsham station in East Suffolk where they were met by Mark Thomas, owner and smoker in chief at Emmet’s Store in the village of Peasenhall, Suffolk.
____________________
He immediately strikes me as one of the last of a dying breed of a certain sort of early to mid-twentieth century Englishman. Charming, witty, well-travelled yet imperviously British with a hint of the madness required for true creativity. I’m glad my Puglian and Goan colleagues have the chance to meet a character straight out of a Kingsley Amis comedy. Albeit one driving a Tesla. 
Emmett’s Store is the oldest artisan ham and bacon producer in the UK dating back to 1820. It sits on a Roman crossroads in the heart of the village. On the drive there, Mark tells us about buying the business from the original family in 2000. The original store was essentially an ancient newsagent with an eccentric sideline in smoking hams and sides of bacon in a small smokehouse in the rear stables. Over the last couple of centuries, the reputation of their smoke encrusted meats grew to the point that The Queen Mother was their best customer, regularly buying Suffolk Black Hams, a ham brined in porter and molasses and smoked over beech ‘flour’ and fennel wood splints. Throughout they never thought to stop selling cigarettes and penny sweets. 
Mark, an entrepreneur and previously a buyer for Harrod’s famed Food Hall, immediately saw potential and put an offer in, which was accepted. This is usually the part of the story where the very thing that makes a producer special disperses into the air like smoke. However, Mark understood immediately that heritage and reputation get punters in the door but only quality makes them return. He realised that he would have to become the producer himself if the quality was to be maintained and eventually increased.
He learnt the brining and smoking process and slowly worked on improving the quality at every stage. He replaced Guinness in the brine with a local porter and formed a relationship with one of the last remaining free range pork producers in Blythburgh. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Less than 3% of pork produced in the UK is from pigs that live outside. The free ranged Old Spot-Duroc crosses have a fat content and meat texture and flavour that is required for genuinely world class cured and smoked meat, something Mark absorbed from his time living in Spain and from his Spanish ex-wife, no doubt.
He takes us straight out to the small brining building in the ex-stables. It’s hard to imagine a smaller producer – the four of us barely fit in the room as we crowd round at tank with whole hams bobbing up and down on the surface of what looks like crude oil. This black gold is in fact porter and molasses. We get to try some of the brine. It’s deep and complex with a perfect balance of salt, sweet, bitter and umami. Drinkable.
We’re ushered outside to his pride and joy; the original smoke house built in 1820. He opens the original wood door. Its inside surface coated in more than two centuries of smoke. He tells us he once took the door off its hinges and transported it to a food festival to accompany his meats, filling the whole conference centre with the heady smell of smoke and molasses. I imagine his fellow exhibitors were thrilled. 
Peering into the dark, we see hams and bacon sides hanging in the billowing pale smoke over smouldering English beech ‘flour’, the finest beech wood particles with the texture of Napoli OO pizza flour, and fennel wood.
We catch the first glimpse here of his restless creativity. Somerset Cheddar and Nottinghamshire Stilton wedges are hanging besides the meat. La Fromagerie is no stranger to smoked cheese but we accept its common flaw: with the exception of fine cheeses designed from the outset to be smoked - like the Navarrico sheep milk tomme, Idiazabal - smoked cheese tends to be made from the cheesemaker’s bottom third, quality-wise, of their saleable production. Why indeed would a maker mask her most delicate and complex wheels with smoke?
Mark, however, has taken the opportunity to buy the best artisan Cheddar and Stilton and, crucially, smoke it delicately, allowing the subtle aromas of the beech and fennel to compliment rather than overwhelm the aromas of the cheese. As a cheesemonger, this is a truly novel idea, something I’ll be pondering for a while. The result? A soft, warm and crusted stilton with a seemingly endless procession of textures, aromas and flavours. The cheddar tastes like a whole toasty as if it were cooked over the embers by Victor Arguinzoniz.
He walks out of the smoke in triumph clutching two sides of smoked molasses and porter bacon. They look like two Tudor planks rescued from a house fire. The smell is utterly intoxicating. I think Mark sees the look in our eyes and offers up some of the warm crisp wobbly fat. Ecstasy. 
Mark explains that he uses no nitrates in his smoked bacon according to the original recipe. Alessandro and I wonder out loud if this is the reason it tastes so much like perfectly grilled pork.
Reluctantly we leave the smokehouse, all backwards glances, and go back to the main building where we watch cooled bacon being sliced on their ninety-year-old slicer. Mark, who gives the reassuring sense of an artisan uninterested by tradition for tradition’s sake, informs us as a matter of fact that the slicer is simply better than anything he can buy new. 
We then looked around the shop while he prepares us lunch. It becomes clear as we browse that since the change of hands at the turn of the century, he has finally taken Emmet’s to its logical conclusion, turning it into a delicatessen selling only food and drink that deserves to sit alongside its ham. It occurs to me as I clock the variety and quality of Spanish produce, that he has the taste and confidence to bring in the very best to compliment his own work. Cecina and Jamon Iberico would seem to embarrass any British contender but in this building, they are simply international colleagues and, dare I say it, equals.
He currently has two employees who, alongside him, preside over a fully stocked, meticulously clean and well merchandised deli and back of house. He tells us that he has found that more staff means more chatting. Maria and I raise an eyebrow each as we nonverbally agree it best not to pass on this detail to HQ.
Our meal is served. We gaze down at a sea of ham. Suffolk Black, fennel, black pepper and chilli. A cold bottle of deep pink Rioja Rosado joins us for lunch.
Maria and Mark bond over Sri Lankan food, having both spent time in the country. Mark shows us a video of the source of his Emmett’s branded chutney, made amongst the banana and lime trees. We taste the date and lime chutney. Black, the colour of his ham brine. Clearly, he is not one to shy away from powerful flavours, it is delicious if not something to serve to the vicar. He asks if we like chillies. We, at this point, warily, say yes. Out comes his homemade garlic and chilli tapenade – olive (and subtlety) free. Heads just about intact, we find that with the fat of the chilli ham, this becomes the condiment we never knew we needed.
Next comes the cheese in the company of a crystalised Valencia orange, made by Mark, of course. Smoked Stilton and crystalised orange. Remember that combination.
Stuffed and slightly high, we take armfuls of items from the shelves and fridges to the till (he knows what he’s doing). He then takes us back to the station and sees us off with either a craftsman’s crushing handshake or an urbane double kiss according to our gender.
The three of us chat on the journey back to Liverpool Street about what we’ve seen and tasted, the truly world class product we buy from him every week, and the one-off we’ve just encountered.
The next day I warm though the freshly smoked bacon chump I’d begged him to sell me, emptying the cooking juices into a jacket potato with a salad picked from the garden. I think he’d approve. 
Copy By LA FROMAGERIE Senior Cheese Monger, Max Melvin
