Vidalia is officially the home of my new favorite cheese plate. What you can see in the photo, is that they served three lovely cheeses with two (count them, two) fruity accompaniments. What you can't see is that there is actually an entire cheese menu, on paper and available for the studying -- thus enabling one to tailor a plate of fromage exactly to the moment's taste. I, for example felt like a creamy but strong flavored trio would be the perfect end to a birthday dinner - oh and it was. Seriously -- absolutely delicious! The plate included:
- Laguiole Vieux: a semi-hard raw cows milk cheese that had good flavor, but you could also share it with people that don't care for stinky cheese.
- Robiola Fia: a runny Italian goats milk cheese that tastes very earthy, particularly if you eat the rind -- which is about the consistency of a thick brie rind and has been aged in a fig leaf for extra pungency.
- Petit Livarot: a firm but oh-so-creamy cows milk cheese that is not for the faint of heart. If some cheeses are a bit barnyardy, this one is more reminiscent of the barn itself. I LOVED it.
Along side these lovely specimens lay a sweep of cherry preserves and a little dollop of rhubarb compote; thick baked crackers provided an appropriately bland carbohydrate base. Honestly, nothing could have made this cheese plate better.
I think what I liked best though, was that you could take your time and think about what cheeses you wanted without anyone standing there holding a cheese knife. If you take your cheese personally, a cheese cart can be a mixed blessing. Yes, there's variety, but there is also a time-constraint in that you have to chose while the fromager is standing there. Also, you can't get up next to the cheeses and smell them -- which is frankly a much better way of knowing what they'll taste like than listening to someone explain 10 cheeses to you. But a menu doesn't tap its foot, the descriptions are apt, and the service at Vidalia is leisurely paced so that there is time to think it through. Two thumbs up!
You can see a version of the Vidalia cheese menu here. Its out of date, so the specific cheeses actually available will vary, but the selection is indicative of what I found. yum.
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