Chekhov's Mistress

When is Artisanal No Longer Artisanal?

by Bud Parr

I went into a Starbucks yesterday and found, somehow unsurprisingly, that Artisanal – the very fancy restaurant built around those lovely smelly chunks of spoiled milk – has branded their cheese for sale in the world’s largest coffee retailer. I think I saw the brand in a grocery store too and the grocery delivery company Fresh Direct sells it. As far as I know Artisanal is only in the New York Starbucks now, but my guess is that these guys are going to do for good cheese what their partners did for good coffee.


An article in the New York Daily News describes the cheese plate as:


Packaged in a special box imported from France, the spread of aged Gouda, Vermont cheddar and blue cheese will come with crackers, dried apricots, walnuts – and advice on pairing the creamy confections with barista brews.


I’ve been to the Artisanal restaurant once and it’s pretty amazing, but I have to say that coffee and cheese are a bit different. Aside from espresso, decent coffee can be fairly well mass-produced because most of the variables, like bean freshness, water temperature and brewing time can be held relatively constant (or you can put tons of sugary stuff in it and no one will know the difference and even pay you three times as much).


Cheese though. Not exactly. If you spend $6 on a cheese-plate that’s been sitting in a Starbucks fridge for a while – despite its imported French box – your fancy cheese isn’t going to taste much different than the Tillamook you can buy at the grocery store (I like Tillamook by the way). At the restaurant they pride themselves on their cheese cave where the atmosphere is controlled and the cheese can be brought out at just the right time. This is nothing like that and to be successful they will have to get ever further from that sort of attention and control that makes it all so perfect. At the very least you would have to let your Starbucks cheese plate sit at room temperature for a couple of hours so that you could really taste it. I would say that their selection of gouda, chedder and blue will all withstand a fairly harsh environment, but probably not a “pairing” with a Frappacino.


I buy a lot of cheese these days from the local farmers in the Green Market. Theirs is made on the farm, using raw milk and it’s consistently wonderful. When the person selling you the cheese drove two hours to get it there, you don’t even mind paying a little more, even though they give it to you in paper instead of an imported French box. They made it by hand and they are the ones that sell it to you. That’s artisanal.


There is a certain irony that the brand “Artisanal” will dilute the very meaning of the word as they bring good cheese to the masses. But I admit that if I happened to be by a Starbucks and I got a hankering for some cheese I would probably pay the money and keep the box for a souvenir.

posted July 05, 2005

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