Best Deal in Town

Hands down is L'Espalier on Cheese Night. For $75 per person, you are served four courses, each with an accompanying wine, including the cheese course. Each course features a cheese that is the focus of the evening. Outstanding.

We have gone to Cheese Night a few times, and each one has been a delight. Our trip last week, however, included a special treat. The evening featured selections from the Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery. The special treat was that the founder and head cheese maker, Allison Hooper, and a 10-top table of her friends were with us for the evening.

The VBCC is best known, I think, for two products: the bright pink containers of creme fraiche (and the only brand of this that you can find most places) and their butter, which is creamy and fresh and tastes how butter is really supposed to taste.  This night was an opportunity to try her cheeses, which I have to admit, I had never tried. I am always eager to reach for cheeses from further away--like Europe; to choose those from just a few miles north didn't seem adventurous or indulgent enough. I even resisted the "buy local" trend by arguing that we needed to all buy local from small artisan fromagers in Europe if we want them to survive. And I do, so I buy. I've also not been as content with local cheeses, believing they lack the depth and delicacy of European cheeses. I have been put in my place!

Hooper learned to make cheese in France, so she has a European sensibility to her cheesemaking; only fresh ingredients, and take the time to do it right every time.

She gave an introduction and then introduced her cheese course, which featured "Cheese 17" a still as yet unnamed new cheese that we were being offered as a trial run. While most of VBCC cheeses are made from goats milk, #17 is a dual-latte of goat and cow. It was closest to the French d'aufinois. Creamy goat with a little cow funk. The delight of eating these cheeses this night was that they were chosen at their best, so each selection was fresh, pungent with real depth and delicate on the palate. The cheese course also featured two standards: a fresh cottin, an easy, very pleasing little cheese, and a bonne bouche, a little runny, richer, ash covered rind. Both delicious.

Of course she has a book out now: In a Cheesemaker's Kitchen, that we had to buy. The photos are beautiful, the recipes look like the align with her philsophy of the best ingredients well prepared, and shared with love.  But if nothing else, it's addition to our collection will remind me to choose her cheeses and to be on the lookout for #17 when it arrives in the market.