The tricky task of finding good cheese in the City of Light
August 15, 2004 - Santa Fe New Mexican
PARIS—It’s not fair. Every cheese enthusiast’s dream is (or should be) to come to Paris, the cheese capital of the world, yet if you’re a tourist, getting your hands on the good stuff is surprisingly difficult.
Though Paris is overflowing with cheese shops, restaurants and wine-and-cheese classes, none of these seem to have been created with visitors in mind.
A visit to most fromageries (cheese shops) will reveal that busy French cheesemongers don’t have time to slice 14 itty-bitty slices just for you, so you can have a taste of their country. They cater to Parisians who are serious about their cheese, buy big hunks of the stuff and throw it in a Tupperware bin in their refrigerator.
Undaunted, a visitor to the City of Light would naturally react by ordering cheese at a restaurant. Restaurants must have good cheese, right? Surprisingly, sadly, most of the time, the answer is no.
Cheese requires special storage and is surprisingly labor intensive. If a waiter comes to a table of four with a cheese cart, he’ll be completely occupied presenting them and portioning them out for a good 10 minutes. A chef, on the other hand, can cook several meals at once.
Faced with these logistical problems, many Parisian restaurants end up offering cheap supermarket cheese or simply punting. Those who do make an effort get around the problems by offering only one or two good cheeses—a relatively disappointing drop in the bucket.
Finally, clever visitors can plan ahead and sign up for a course on wine and cheese, but most of the time, the emphasis tends to be on the wine or the social aspect of the event, leaving little spotlight to shine on the dairy products.
Knowing where to go can make all the difference and offer a cheese-friendly counterpoint to these problems.
Buy it at a cheese shop
Visitors to Paris don’t often have the luxury of having a Tupperware bin and a large refrigerator in their hotel rooms, and many wind up buying hunks larger than they can scoff in a short visit. They forget what they left in the minibar when they leave.
A few clever fromagers have caught on, however, offering picnic- friendly portions to those who know where to go.
One of them, Cherif Bourbit, is also one of the most-respected cheesemongers in Paris.
He recently guided me on a wine-and-cheese tasting that culminated in what he termed a “fusion” pairing. Combining a white Montlouis wine with a sheep/goat-milk cheese called Mascare, he guided me to a flavor neither had. It was like having a mouthful of almonds.
I was still chewing when I added his cheese shop, Fil ‘o’ Fromage, to my list of favorites.
Bourbit is one of the few running ahead of the pack in getting cheese into the mouths of visitors. At Fil ‘o’ Fromage, he offers two takeout possibilities, both perfect for a picnic by the Seine River. His plateau is a pique-nique totale, as he calls it, with everything from wine and cheese to salads and even plastic cups.
For the hardcore cheese lover, he offers takeout tasting plates with either cheeses from a particular region or a plate of his favorite pairings of the moment. He also helps visitors choose their own.
Get it at a restaurant
Upstairs at Fil ‘o’ Fromage offers an alternative to the restaurant dilemma. It’s a low-key affair with wooden tables and chairs, surrounded by photos and paintings of art expos that Bourbit organizes. The menu is an ever-evolving choice of cheese plates that highlight a region’s offerings or a certain style of cheese.
What happens when one of the cheeses isn’t up to snuff? Bourbit doesn’t skip a beat. He licks his finger and wipes Beaufort—a wonderfully evolving, creamy cheese made in the Savoie province in the French Alps—off the menu. “I’ll replace it with something that’s coming into season,” he says.
He turns out to be a sort of wine-and-cheese-pairing fanatic. On the left side of the slate, directly over each menu item, is a number written in pink—a code for which of his 130 wines he thinks goes best with each cheese plate on any given day. Bourbit comes in every morning and tastes each cheese on the menu to make sure the pairings are correct.
“A cheese will change week to week or even day to day,” he says, “and I want to make sure that they’re perfectly matched with the wines.”
Take a course
You can count on Bourbit to choose your cheese, but to learn more about how a cheese makes the journey from a cow, goat or sheep to your mouth, you need to take a course or at least have a chat.
Enter Harriet Welty Rochefort.
This woman literally wrote the book (two, actually) on the French, delving deep into their eating habits and their fascination with cheese. Born in Iowa, she married a Frenchman and never went home. She now gives what she calls “Cheese Chats” at her home in eastern Paris.
The chats are an intimate look at what goes into making cheese and where each comes from, but the proof is in the pudding. Welty Rochefort serves a large variety of cheeses, each with a homemade card that explains its origin, while sharing what she knows about them and what she knows about the French.
“I like to serve this one in front of people,” she says, starting off the tasting by scooping out a spoonful of cancoillote from a plastic tub. This cow’s milk cheese from the eastern part of France is so gooey, she pours it off the spoon onto a hunk of baguette.
Later, to illustrate the difference aging cheese can make, she serves up a younger and an older Comte, a cow’s milk cheese. The young one is soft with a fruity flavor, and its older brother has an earthier note.
The course, taught in English to no more than 10 people at a time who drink no less than five kinds of wine, goes by quickly and its informal nature makes you forget you’re learning.
“Everything that happens here is designed to put cheese into the fore,” says Bourbit about his shop, but it almost seems like he’s generalizing on the glories of France.
“Cheese,” he says, “always comes first.”
If you go ...
Where: Fil ‘o’ Fromage
12 rue Neuve Tolbiac
75013 Paris (13th Arrondissement)
Metro: Bibliotheque Francois Mitterand
Telephone: 011-33-1-53-79-13-35
Contact information for Harriet Welty Rochefort
Web site: www.hwelty.com. Look for the link to “wine & cheese tastings.”
E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Telephone: 011-33-6-13-61-55-51
