If I had wanted clouds all the time I would have moved to....

These gray days are bringing me down.  Though down is an okay place to be when you have cheese. Last week we featured the cheese of the British Isles and we've decided to continue featuring them until the sun comes out.  They are for sure great gloomy weather cheeses.  Nothing light and airy about these guys.

The big winner this past week has been the Lincolnshire Poacher.  What a cheese!  Big fruit flavors, mostly pineapple and a little bit of pear.  Just tangy enough to tickle the tip of your tongue.  Chewy, savory and delicious.

But don't forget about Poacher's cousin from Wales, Hafod.  Made from the same basic recipe but with incredibly different results.  More grassy than fruity, it has a long finish that compels you to eat more.

If straight up cheddar is your thing we have the Keen's open right now for your snacking pleasure.  It's tart and zippy and gives away maybe just a tiny tiny bit of sweetness.  I love this cheese and I am not afraid to say it.

Of course there are the English blues Stilton and its cousin Stichelton--the raw (gasp!) milk version.  Nothing not to like about either one of these guys.  I'm not going to bother with descriptions, they're just delicious.

Oh, and Wensleydale!  Yogurty, buttermilky, and fluffy.  Refined and not as bold as its countrymencheese, but oh so  satisfying.

So lucky you that it is still cloudy.  Come try 'em all and save 15%.  There might not be sun until next week...

surprise?!

We make a lot of sandwiches.  I just needed to type that and come to terms with it.  We sell a lot of cheese but we also make a lot of sandwiches.  At applewood in Brooklyn the menu changed just about every other day.  It was a lot of fun to try new things and also a challenge to keep up with the changes.

I wish we could change the sandwich menu as frequently here but for logistical reasons it would be a total nightmare.  Too many employees making sandwiches, and really after all we're a cheese shop.  So we have rotating specials on our sandwich menu which helps satisfy my need to make something new.

Yet that wasn't quite enough.  I dug deep into my brain to a great meal I had at a little restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Craigie Street Bistro (now Craigie on Main).  Tuesday through Thursdat after 9pm you could go and have a tasting menu at a reduced price, but the catch was that they wouldn't tell you what you were going to eat.  It was, well, you know, a surprise.

And so we decided it would be fun to have a surprise sandwich.  Something that could change from day to day and even customer to customer.  We'd charge only $7 to entice people to take a chance and if it wasn't their favorite sandwich ever they wouldn't feel entirely disappointed.  We try very hard to make it different than our other sandwiches--different combos than we might normally try out.

Thus far the response has been great.  Apparently people like surprises.  Some folks try and ask what's on it but our response is always the same: "It's a surprise".  It's hilarious to watch people hem and haw over taking the leap or not.  I totally understand because a bad sandwich can really ruin your day.

Both shops are making surprises and each shop has its own idea of what is delicious.   Feedback on your surprise is always appreciated.

Vermont Butter and Cheese Cremont

Some of you might remember the rapper from the 90's Dr. Ocatagon (some of his other monikers were Kool Keith and Dr. Doom) formerly of the Ultramagnetic Mc's.  One of his more well known songs in which he raps about a mythical beast that is half shark, half alligator, and half man.  Of course the math doesn't really add up, but the point is that a 3 parted beast is pretty darn cool.

Mixed milk cheese always seem to remind me of that song (or vice versa) as they often have that mysterious frankenstein feel to them.  I'm probably not making my point particularly clear, but the idea is that mixed milk cheeses are yummy.

Enter the Vermont Butter & Cheese Cremont.  Cremont combines creamy+vermont to convey the double creaminess of this cheese.  This cheese is part cow/part cow cream/part goat.  I love the description from the VBC website so here you go:

Cremont is a mixed-milk cheese combining local fresh cows’ milk, goats’ milk and a hint of Vermont cream. This cheese is a celebration of Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery’s terroir: Vermont cream, goats’ milk, cheese know how and good taste for luscious cheese.

Twice a week we drive across Vermont to the 20 Family Farms to pick up fresh goats’ milk. Our cows’ cream and milk comes from a local Coop of 500 family dairy farmers in northern Vermont. The cream is separated in the morning and delivered fresh — within few hours — to the creamery. We believe that pure milk makes the best cheese. Vermont land, the pasture and soil, the seasons, the special care of the goats and cows can all be tasted in our cheeses.

Milks and cream are blended together and then pasteurized. Then a special cocktail of yeast and mold are added to create its unique flavor and naturally coagulate the milk overnight. The next day, the fresh curd is shaped by hand into Cremont-size cylinders. Fresh cheeses will first be moved into a drying room to prepare the rind to grow and slightly dry the surface of the cheese. After 1 day, cheeses are then moved into our aging room where thegeotricum yeast will slowly grow on the surface of the cheese to create its unique wrinkled cream colored rind.

Cremont, also called the Cream of Vermont, combines the nutty taste from of our crème fraîche, the creamy texture of our Bonne Bouche, and the wrinkled geotricum rind of our Bijou.

An American original crafted in the bucolic Green Mountains of Vermont that has already found its place on the cheeseboard.

 This cheese has become an immediate favorite in the shop.  It cries out for a little fig spread or a smear of honey.  Let it sit out of the fridge for a good long while and wowee wow.

Construction? Again?

Okay, let's just be clear from the start:  We love our France 44 Cheese shop just the way it is.  We're not changing anything about the existing shop.  We'll keep making delicious sandwiches and selling incredible cheese.  Of course we understand why some folks might think we're changing things up.  

Lunch business is booming and we've out grown our 4 small tables that we have down there.  So we're borrowing a little space from the mothership to make more room for more people.  Instead of seating for 10 we'll have space for nearly 30.

We're also going to be phasing in some additional parts to our business, but we'll have to talk more about that later.  In the meantime we're excited to have more space for more customers to enjoy our sandwiches.

New Items in the Shop

It's been a while since we featured a few of the new items kicking around the shop:

Poschiavo Pasta:  Straight out of the mountains of Switzerland, in a region just north of Lombardy, Italy, this is some serious spaghetti.  Made in a mill started by Augustinian nuns, 5 generations of the Fisler family have been working at this mill.  Semolina durum wheat is coarsely ground and mixed with water from a nearby mountain spring.  The pasta is then slow dried in the mill's attic before being hand-packed into beautiful wrapping.


Ames Farm Blooming Prairie Honey:  A brand new offering from our friends in Watertown, MN.  The bees have been hard at work and wait until you taste what is inside the jar.  Creamy, floral honey that is made for spreading on sandwiches or smearing on a chunk of cheese.  Try a little bit of this spread on a grilled cheese sandwich and you'll think you discovered the holy grail of deliciousness.


Rogue Chocolatier Piura: Extremely limited edition chocolate from local chocolate maker Colin Gasko.  The amount of deliciousness contained in this bar is epic.  The idea that only 4,000 bars of this chocolate will be made is utterly depressing.    Beautiful letter press packaging contains a deeply satisfying  chocolate eating experience.  Worth every penny.

Tyrrell's Potato Chips: In England they call them crisps, but somehow through the magic of globalization they come to us as chips.  Whatever they're called, these are some seriously yummy chips.  Fun flavors like Sweet Chili, Cheddar & Chive, and Cider Vinegar.  They even put the variety of potato used on the packaging.

Rick's Picks:  We are proud to be carrying the originator of the pickle craze.  Rick started making pickles in his Brooklyn apartment before anyone knew that pickle making was cool.  He has some awesome and unique varieties such as phat beets, smokra (smoky pickled okra), and spicy mean beans.  Try them with cheese or on burgers or wherever.  These are addictive and don't say we didn't warn you.

Pay to Play

Being reviewed and receiving press about your establishment is an inevitable part of any retail business.  Sometimes it works out great, sometimes not so great.  We try the best we can and if someone doesn't like us then it's our responsibility to do better.

My understanding of reviews are that they happen anonymously.  A critic arrives at your venue under the cloak of secrecy and evaluates what is what in your establishment.  Occasionally a place might pitch a story and invite a food writer to their place.  Or a local food writer/blogger might approach a business about writing a feature on them.  That happens too.

One thing that should never happen is a reviewer/writer receiving something for free.  An astonishing moment in my restaurant career came when a local reviewer in Brooklyn approached my employers about paying for their meal.  We all reacted with incredulity.  How could that be impartial if you are receiving a free meal?  It defies all logic.

If you can't afford to pay for the meal/product you have no business reviewing/featuring it.  It diminishes the value of the item.  The power dynamic changes from "I'm interested in your product and it is good content for my paper/blog/newsletter" to "I'm doing you a favor by reviewing your establishment/product".  There is no room for quid pro quo in this dynamic.  If it isn't mutually beneficial then the relationship shouldn't exist.

I know that there are producers of products out there who send samples of their products to media hoping that someone will take notice and feature them.  That's their prerogative (an a calculated business decision) if they want to give away their product.  It can be a very savvy option and I place no judgement if that is how they choose to promote their  product.  The ocean of specialty food products is vast and it can be difficult to be spotted.

We've received some wonderful press.  Every reviewer that we have interacted with in the TC has been professional and none (to my knowledge) have expected anything for free.  In my utterly humble opinion I think we've presented some interesting things to write about.  I hope we continue to and that local media/bloggers/pamphleteers continue to find us compelling.

On turning 1

Every one who has ever opened a business has had the same anxiety: you're going to open the doors and no one is going to show up.  We loved the location we picked for the St Paul shop.  Obviously you don't go into business thinking it's a bad idea, but still there is that nagging anxiety.

When we opened the doors one  year ago today we announced it on this new fangled thing called twitter.  And people came.  It was amazing.  The trickle of customers accelerated to a stream pretty quickly.  It helped that we had a model we already liked and all we needed to do was tweak it a little bit to fit the Saint Paul crowd.

One year down and we have a few things figured out.  Still we feel like there are so many things we can do better, and with the help of our customers hopefully we will just be more and more awesomer.

I know there are stores in the world people shop at because they feel like they have to.  These tend to be really cheap or really convenient.  Folks spend their hard earned money at our shop because they want to.  That's amazes me every day.

A million times thank you to every one who has supported us in our fledgling year.  We hope to see you all soon.