La Fromagerie
868 College Street
416-516-4278

Robert Burns’ shop is tailored toward a nice hike in the mountains of France where he was once married. Not the correct footwear and walking stick one may need, but rather the food. Take several types of cheese, a couple of baguettes and several French saucission. He doesn’t sell the other integral ingredient, red wine, but that can be purchased on the way to the hillside.

Yet La Fromagerie is in fact near no French mountains, or mountains at all for that matter. This is College Street and the red streetcar going by clearly indicates this is Toronto. The hike required is only the one back home. And it’s probably only a block or two away, as this cozy cheese shop has a neighbourhood feel to it. Instead of laying out a picnic gazing across lush valleys, the reality is more like gazing across the living room floor at the television. Continue reading From the Mountains of College & Ossington »

Cheese Boutique
45 Ripley Avenue
416-762-6292

“Quality is our bottom line,” says Fatos Pristine while he displays the effects of aging on cheese. Fatos, as the owner of the Cheese Boutique, is largely responsible for how people in Toronto view not only cheese, but also gourmet food in general. With wire-rimmed glasses, a high hairline, and expressive hand gestures, Pristine could easily pass for an eccentric professor instead of a local cultural icon.

Continue reading A Dedication to Quality at the Cheese Boutique »

Thin Blue Line
93B Roncesvalles Avenue
416-840-6966

The old saying goes that “good things come in small packages”. Nowhere is that more true than the tiny little cheese boutique that opened on Roncesvalles Avenue last fall. Taking up half of a standard storefront and with maybe 100 square feet of space for customers, it’s a tiny little jewel box of carefully chosen items.

Continue reading The Cheese is Fine, I Walk the Line »

Global Cheese
76 Kensington Avenue
415-593-9251

When I was twenty and still throwing my garbage off the balcony, my room-mate Max and I made our first trip to the grocery store together. We were young and poor and uneducated. He picked up a piece of havarti and exclaimed, “Wow, cheese is expensive!” and I didn’t really keep cheese in the house for the next five years. Then I found Global Cheese. Now I believe that cheese might release endorphins or make me a little high because if my stock runs down to one piece of cheese I start detoxing (dear dairy industry, I am not actually claiming that cheese is a narcotic).

No disrespect to Cheese Magic which, as my pal Natalie puts it, has the cutest boys, or Cheese Boutique which imports price-prohibitive rounds of artisanal cheese, but Global has the best selection, prices, and service.

Continue reading Cheesology 101 »

I have a cheesy confession to make. I love cheese, but while I enjoy French cheeses, not to mention Spanish, Greek, Georgian and so on, my heart is first and foremost given to the Italian ones. And so when I saw a familiar sight – loads of bocconcini swimming in whey and twinkling at me from Dominion’s cheese counter – I gleefully pounced and brought them home with me, looking forward to a treat. I tasted quite a few supermarket Italian cheese imitations back in Europe and some of them were quite good, so my hopes were high.

I didn’t even bother to check whether I had any tomatoes for Caprese salad, sure that my bocconcini woudn’t last till dinner-time. I was in for a big surprise though. Their texture proved to be rubbery and unexciting, their flavour – almost completely neutral, well described by the French word fade. In fact they were incredibly boring. Bocconcini stayed in the fridge for three days and were gone only because nothing edible can last long with two full-grown males in the house.

Continue reading In Search of Real Cheese »