Meeting the Cheese Family Part 1: Saxelby's

My Connecticut cheese bucket-list has been sitting around without much action on my part. With only three weeks left, I started making moves. There were several people nearby in the cheese industry that I had been hoping to meet over the summer. I set up several back-to-back meetings and the first stops were cheese stores in the area.

First on the list: meeting Anne Saxelby of Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York. Anne was a former intern at Cato Corner after college and went on to open her own successful (and delightfully cute) cheese store in New York City. Basically she's my hero and did almost exactly what I'm hoping to accomplish in a few years. 

Anne's store is a small cheese counter inside the Essex Market on the Lower East Side. For those not familiar with it or other indoor markets, imagine several small "stores" -- bread, produce, fish, even chocolate -- providing one-stop shopping at what amounts to a grocery shopping mall or a daily farmer's market on steroids. 

Saxelby's has a very focused selection of cheese from American artisanal cheesemakers, primarily from the Northeast. They also have yogurt, fresh cheeses (such as ricotta or mozzarella), and fresh bread from a local baker. It's nothing fancy, but they will whip you up a deliciously simple cheese sandwich with any of the cheeses, fresh bread, and a simple topping like olive oil.  I've had lots of cheese sandwiches before. Still, I had my face rocked clean off by Pleasant Ridge cheese on a small raisin roll that Katrina sent me away with after my visit. It might have been delirium from walking around in the heat all day, but as I sat in the park taking the sandwich out in two bites, I could have sworn it got me drunk.  

When I actually met Anne, we went for brunch in Brooklyn before her cheese radio show. I knew we had bonded when she ordered from the menu exactly how I like to roll. Three meals, share them all:  the fried chicken, the eggs, and the pancakes. It's a hearty giddiness for variety and a refusal to let anything delicious feel left out. (P.S. if you're in NYC go to Roberta's; it rules). 

In the studio with Anne

We cleaned our plates and I had plenty of time to pick Anne's brain about the business and how she got started. Then we headed over to the studio adjacent to the restaurant for her cheese radio show. Oh yeah I didn't make that part up. She has a show on an internet radio station called Cutting the Curd, during which she interviews a different illustrious and interesting person in the industry every week. I sat in as "guest host," a role in which I fear I may have made myself seem far too seasoned upon mentioning that I used to be a college radio d.j. Talking about cheesemaking was not quite the same as popping in Flaming Lips tracks at 3 in the morning for stoned 19-year-olds and pizza delivery kids...or is it?. Embarrassingly, I was not at all familiar with the cheese of the cheesemaker we were interviewing, nor did I know anything about the topic of herd migration and seasonal Alpine cheese production that we were discussing. In sum, I wasn't the best guest host. But I was still ridiculously excited that I was on a cheese radio show with the pros and, like a cheese nerd, thought I was somehow cooler for it.

The next day I visited the store and met with Katrina, who was runs the store when Anne isn't there. The retail area is ideal for low overhead because only a couple people at most could really fit back there at any given time.  What the store lacks in bling it makes up for in charm and friendliness. It has the exact unpretentious and welcoming attitude that I would want in my cheese shop. I also love that Anne has direct contact and relationships with all of the cheesemakers she does business with and often visits their farms. The day I returned from New York, I visited an equally awesome store but with a completely different philosophy....

Completely unrelated to visiting Saxelby's, but I was impressed
with the cheese plate offered at McSorley's in the East Village.