There’s an American flag flying high over the Cotswolds. It flutters in the breeze at Stow-on-the-Wold, above the dark-green shop front of D’Ambrosi Fine Foods. Below it, the husband-and-wife team of Andrew and Jesse D’Ambrosi smoke local hams and salmon. Andrew was born and bred in Brooklyn. Jesse is from just outside Boston. They boast of making Reuben sandwiches “as big as Katz’s Deli,” and on Thanksgiving, they make corn bread and cauliflower doused in buffalo sauce. The shop’s shelves are lined with Cheetos, Hershey bars, Triscuits, and Jif.
At first glance, this seems exotic fare for the red-trousered, inherited-Wellies brigade in these parts, who tend to like their food like their Barbour jackets: brown, heavy, warming—and from the 1970s. Until, standing in the queue at D’Ambrosi, or the courtyards of Daylesford, or the swimming pool at Soho Farmhouse, you realize suddenly, in a shock of imported vowels—that they’re all American, too.
