Letter to La Cave a Fromage - a "wonderful cheese retailer" in London...
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am
writing to say how disappointed I am with a cheese I bought from your stall at
the Thame Food Festival. It was particularly annoying
because I’d read somewhere that you were decent cheesemongers and
only sold the finest cheeses, and I’d gone there especially to sample your
wares and restock my cheese selection for a supper I was hosting that night.
This
certainly wasn't the case with the slab of Somerset Blue I had the
misfortune to purchase. In short, it tasted and smelled of pear-flavoured ammonia,
giving it a disconcerting whiff somewhere between nail varnish and a skate that’s
been left in a plastic bag at the back of a broken fridge for two years. Even
the wonderful crackers I'd purchased for the occasion couldn't cut the foul
flavour.
Let me
give you the background. When I examined the cheeses on display at your stall,
a very chipper chap quickly directed me to your Somerset Blue - which he
described, quite wrongly, as a “luvva-ly stilton we make ourselves”. It certainly looked
mature, but I had no idea how much until I was unfortunate enough to try a
mouthful. I should have been suspicious because I wasn't offered a sample to
try, but at the reassuringly expensive prices foodie outfits like yours confidently
charge these days, there is usually an assumed trust between purchaser and fleecer.
Instead,
your cheese chap quickly got down to business and no sooner had his back been
turned for a second to weigh a slab (was it a switch?), he said: "I tell
you what mate, as it's the end of the day, you can have the whole piece for £6."
He said it in such a cheery, and as I know now underhand way, that it
seemed like he was doing me a favour.
How he
wrapped it so tightly that the putrid smell of ammonia didn't seep out into the
car, or poison ducks in passing villages, I have no idea. But as soon as I
unwrapped it at home, the house was filled with an unearthly stench that reminded
me of prahok, a fermented fish paste made in Cambodia, that had been soaked
in tramps’ urine for a few days.
Words are
useless for occasions like these, and I really can’t do justice to how repulsive
it was. In fact, the unpleasantness of the smell was only matched by the revoltingness
of the taste I had the misfortune to experience before I promptly spat
the offending cracker out. When I checked with a cheese expert friend, a curd nerd if you will, he said it was obvious the cheese hadn't been stored properly,
and the best place for it was the bin. Or perhaps an underground nuclear bunker
designed for storing such biological abominations?
It is
quite obvious that your cheese chap knew quite well how revolting the Somerset
Blue was in the invidious tactics he used in disposing of his repulsive produce.
But I would expect more from a supplier that immodestly, and unattributably,
hails itself as a "wonderful cheese retailer".
On your
website, you add: "Cheese is simple, it is mainly made of milk, but, at
the same time complex..." Perhaps you mean toxic? Having re-read it a
couple of times, you then really do go on to say: "Cheese is totally
integrated in nature and based on secular savoir faire and human
skills. We simply want to keep up with traditions and bring them into our
modern world."
Well, you
have certainly done the latter, and created something so contemporaneously hazardous,
it warrants its own page in any good modern warfare manual. As for secular savoir faire, I imagine if Saddam
Hussein was still around, it’s the sort of thing he’d use to terrorise the
Kurds. Or perhaps even he wouldn’t have gone that far?
Yours
sincerely,
Alex
Watts
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