Grub Street

Are we in the midst of a clotted-cream crisis? Nicky Perry, owner of Tea & Sympathy, believes so. She just learned from her supplier, Epicure, that an entire shipping container of clotted cream — made from unpasteurized milk and used in baked goods — was destroyed by the FDA a few weeks ago. The reason: more foot-and-mouth disease in the U.K. She panicked. “Help!” she wrote back to friends in England. “What’s happening?”

She then fired off more e-mails to suppliers in the States, desperately trying to stockpile more. With the foot-and-mouth scare, Matt Kevill, of Epicure, says it’s unclear whether the next container, which is expected to arrive in New York in a few weeks, will pass the noses of FDA inspectors. Perry can't wait that long. “Without clotted cream, scones are just not the same,” she says. “Without clotted cream, we’re screwed.” Our sentiments exactly! But don’t despair just yet. Entela Iliriani of Bär-bo-ne makes Balkan-style clotted cream every night at the restaurant (from, she would have you know, pasteurized milk) and serves it with meatballs and red-pepper purée. —Geoffrey Gray