Today was National Grilled Cheese Day, and it also saw the grand opening of Brooklyn’s newest cheese-related shop: The Brooklyn Slate storefront, at 305 Van Brunt St in Red Hook! Founders Kristy Hadeka (whose family slate quarry provides the raw materials for the boards) and Sean Tice were on hand to greet visitors, and there was a station outside serving grilled cheese sandwiches.

Crafters of the best slate cheese boards out there, and the company largely responsible for making this stone a now-ubiquitous option for cheese presentation (not to mention providing the backdrop for many of the photos on this site), the store features lots of slate, of course, in many shapes, sizes and colors. In addition, there will also be cheese knives, domes and assorted gear, goods from Formaticum, housewares, linens, books and magazines, and much more. If you needed an excuse to head out to Red Hook, here’s yet another one. 

In a reminder of how much Red Hook has gone through post-Sandy, the store has a water-line painted on the brick wall, indicating where the water reached to during the flood (you can see it in the second-to-last photo). Thankfully the store had not yet been built out when the storm hit, but there was still considerable work and repairs necessary to get back on track and ready for the opening. 

So head on over and get yourself some slate! 

Brooklyn Slate Company
305 Van Brunt Street, Brooklyn NY (map)

While spending time in Portland, Maine recently, I made a trip to nearby Scarborough to visit The Cheese Iron, a cheese and specialty foods shop. Owned and operated by cheesemongers and husband-and-wife team Vince Maniaci and Jill Dutton, they’ve been bringing the best in European and American cheeses to the Portland area since 2006.

Vince has been at the cheesemongering game for a long time, as he told me while showing me around the store: after getting out of the Navy in the 90’s he started at the bottom, sweeping the floors at Cambridge, MA’s esteemed Formaggio Kitchen, learning the ropes along the way; later he spent time at Dean and Deluca in New York and Harry’s Farmers Markets in Atlanta. When Harry’s was acquired by Whole Foods, he took over the cheese counter at the flagship store in Austin, Texas. After five years in Texas, Vince and Jill decided it was time to open their own shop, and made their way to Portland, where The Cheese Iron was born.

One of the great features of the store is the open-windowed cave in the back, with wheels of cheese laid out on hay mats and cheese tryers — also known as “cheese irons”, hence the name of the store — resting on the window sills. The visible cave is a great way to introduce the customers to the process of affinage and cheese handling, as well as being visually striking. I assumed there were further walk in coolers in the back, but Vince told me that wasn’t the case; the windowed cave is the whole backstock, allowing for wheels to be brought into the cave, flipped, washed and brushed to bring them to peak, and sold when ready without languishing in coolers unnecessarily. 

Sadly, I was a bit early for the arrival of larger numbers of Maine cheeses, which were expected in the autumn, but I did get to try some excellent cheeses, including “City of Ships” from Hahn’s End Dairy in Maine, a semi-firm aged cheese, with a distinctive tang and bite; Alpha Tolman from Jasper Hill, better known as the focus of Culture Magazine and Jasper Hill’s “Birth of A Cheese 2012” project (I’d been wanting to try that one for a while!), a young Alpine that was already developing a depth and complexity of flavor that promises great things for the future; and Humble Pie from Woodcock Farms, a sheep and cow mixed-milk washed rind cheese, meaty, buttery and pungent and absolutely at peak.

The Cheese Iron also has a wide selection of charcuterie, breads and other accompaniments for your cheese. If you’re in Portland, Maine and need your cheese fix, this is definitely the first stop. 

The Cheese Iron
200 US Route One
Scarborough, Maine 04074
207.883.4057

Now open at 67 Irving Place in Manhattan, just off Union Square: Bedford Cheese Shop’s new location! The new shop is larger then the Brooklyn location and has a more expansive cheese chase to go with it, and features a similarly excellent array of European and American cheeses. As with the Brooklyn location, the selection of Swiss small-scale farmstead cheeses is particularly impressive (I’ve found Swiss cheeses there that I had trouble locating in cheeses shop in Switzerland last summer). 

One of the first cheeses I picked up there on opening day was the Cazelle de St Afrique, an amazing little sheep’s milk puck of buttery, oozing, grassy goodness, pure decadence in a few blissful bites. from famed affineur Hervé Mons, it’s one to look seek out.

So head on over and check it out! They also have a range of charcuterie, pickled goods, breads, jams, mostardas, oils, and everything else that you might need to complement your cheese plate.

Bedford Cheese Shop, 67 Irving Place
(888) 484-3243; bedfordcheeseshop.com.
Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

Recently I made a trip down to the Lower East Side to check out Malt & Mold, a “neighborhood shop for beer and cheese”, as well as many other edible delights. Open only a few weeks, they were recently profiled in the New York Times:

Kevin M. Heald’s smartly tailored little shop, Malt & Mold…has assembled about 50 craft beers, mostly domestic, and a well-curated assortment of cheeses, also artisanal and American, along with some imports like taleggio. Pickles and chocolates from Brooklyn, yogurts, vinegars, crackers and cured meats line the shelves and display cases. For now, the beers are in bottles and cans; eight tap lines, and growlers in various sizes, await a state permit. The shop may be out of the way, but it is the only local retailer for the excellent sweet and savory knishes from Knishery NYC, a new company; for salami by Charlito’s Cocina, of St. Louis; and for ice cream from the Bent Spoon, of Princeton, N.J., which shares the freezer with Blue Marble, Adirondack and Van Leeuwen.

 When you head this far east into the LES the shopping options start to dwindle, so this is a great addition to the neighborhood, for hop and curd fans alike. 

The owner, Kevin Heald, was quick to point out that the cheese selection is still being grown, but from what I saw and tasted it was small but very well curated and cared for, with a good cross section of American and European cheeses from the top makers and affineurs on both continents, from the best of Vermont, to cheeses from acclaimed French fromager Rodolphe Le Meunier. 

Out for tasting was Jasper Hill’s Conundrum — which is actually just a working title, the same one they gave Harbison, I believe, back when it was a work in progress — a bloomy rind cheese that is then washed, turning it into a hybrid bloomy-washed rind of some sort. Whatever the particulars, it was excellent, similar to their Moses Sleeper but with the pinkish rind of a classed B. Linens washed cheese smattered with the white molds of its bloomy origins. Pungent and mildly barnyardy, with a lightly sticky rind, the buttery, lightly eyed paste has a nice saltiness and a grassy, full flavor with a light meatiness and vegetal finish. 

So take a trip down east, and pick up some beer, knishes and a couple wedges of cheese, and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice picnic, courtesy of Malt & Mold.

Malt & Mold, 221 East Broadway (Clinton Street), (646) 238-0272, maltandmold.com.