Cheese Please!

“How can anyone be expected to govern a country with 325 cheeses?”

– General Charles De Gaulle

I love cheese. Among the many things my ancient French genetics have contributed, it’s my liking of all kinds of cheese, everything from hard cheeses like Gruyere and Gouda, to runny Camembert and soft Brie and the deliciously creamy Brillat-Savarin, to the really smelly cheeses like Roquefort and Livarot and Munster.

A couple summer ago, I made an off hand remark that my wife may never let me forget; I said BC cheeses “weren’t there yet”.

She took this to mean I didn’t care for the cheese she had asked me to purchase, but that was not it at all. At the time, the artisan cheese industry in BC was still in its youth; in start up mode you could say. They were producing all manner of things, experimenting and developing flavours for consumption by an eager public. While it was all a lot of fun to try these early efforts, compared to what you could get in Quebec (not that you can buy Quebec cheese here by and large, and a pity it is too) it was nothing special; and in terms of bang for the buck, it was hard for a BC soft cheese to compare to a soft cheese like Le Coutances from France when the latter not only tasted better but also cost less than the former!

Today, two summers later, I am happily eating those words – BC cheese has arrived. Every Saturday at the Farmer’s Market I’m buying curd (as good as anything I ever had in my youth in la belle province) from Little Qualicum Cheeseworks, who also make a very nice Brie and what they call Qualicum Spice, which is a Gouda style cheese infused with garlic, onion, and bell pepper. I love the Tiger Blue from Poplar Grove in the Okanagan. I like the sheep and goat cheeses that are available now too.

Prices for the local cheeses are also now very competitive with the imported stuff, the effect of both maturation of the industry and the strength of the Canadian dollar relative to the Euro.

BC truly is a foodie's paradise.

The Trout Lake Farmer’s Market on Saturdays usually has two cheese makers on site, but most of these cheeses are available from either La Grotta del Formaggio on Commercial Drive or at Les Amis du Fromage on 2^nd between Fir & Burrard.