Lunch

A few days ago I had lunch at Marion Street Cheese Market with a girlfriend. They're the ones who do the delicious Gouda studded chocolate. They also have a cafe where you can get breakfast lunch or dinner. We decided to go for lunch.

I took pictures of everything we had brought to the table, but as I'm writing this post it occurs to me that I'm not a restaurant reviewer/critic. I talk about cheese. With that in mind I'm going to talk about the cheese plate we got.

You can create your own cheese/charcuterie plate. My friend and I both love 10 year Cheddar, so that was on the list. I'd never tried the Les Freres from Crave Brothers, so I had to have it. We also picked a proscuitto from Iowa that's getting rave reviews.

There was some question on our server's behalf as to if the cheese was in stock or not. I told her that if it wasn't in, we'd take some Winnie instead. A bit later the cheese came out. On a separate plate was some bread and butter. The butter seemed like overkill since I had cheese, but who am I to tell someone that butter isn't necessary. The server said that they had some of the Les Freres that had just come in.

This should have been a warning. We should have said "no, take this cheese back she is not ready for consumption and you shouldn't have opened her up today". Instead we accepted the cheese plate. The ten year Cheddar was good*. Fantastic really. The ham was outstanding. The Crave Brothers cheese wasn't as good.

My girlfriend a turophile from way back took one look at it and said "it's not ripe". I sniffed it. It didn't smell like a big washed rind cheese. I squeezed it. It was kind of rubbery. I tasted it. It was like...um...okay it was similar to deli Muenster. No funk to it, mild and bordering on boring. After a sip of a sparkling wine it got some mustiness to it, but it was not good on it's own.

I don't blame the cheese, or cheesemaker for this. As sellers of cheese they should not have put an unripened cheese on the cheese plate. I should have gotten a chunk of Winnie on my plate instead.

I will still shop there. After all their wine selection is phenomenal and they've got some good cheeses too. I did pick up some more chocolate too. When all is said and done, I still haven't had Les Freres cheese, not really. I'm going to have to go on a cheese hunt. I know that good, ripened, stinky, creamy, flavorful, Les Freres is out there. I'm going to find her.



*This is a good example of why I don't review restaurants. I didn't write down the name of the cheese. Now I have no idea where it was from geographically, or who makes it. She tasted like a Wisconsin Cheddar but I can't be sure. Dang it!