For Foodies: Cheesy

When music went digital, the world changed in many ways. Perhaps one of the most unexpected results of that change was the arrival of hundreds of wheels of cheese here in Prague.

You might ask what exactly cheese and music have to do with each other (schmaltzy Barry Manilow numbers aside). Well, as music became digital, neighborhood record shops became obsolete. And when you’re a neighborhood record salesman like Yura Malík, that means you needed to look elsewhere for income.

Yura looked to cheese.

It’s not as big a leap as you might think. As a DJ and record seller, Yura’s favorite spot for picking up new albums was Holland where he had lived for a few years in the early ’90s. Starting to see the connection?

So in 2006 instead of discs of music, Yura filled the old record store in Letná with discs of cheese from Holland, and the first Cheesy shop was born at Letenské Náměstí 6. Just one month after that, he opened his second shop in Smichov (Štefánikova 25). Now Yura owns seven shops himself, and has franchised out another 13, which are located both in Prague and elsewhere in the Czech Republic. Two additional franchises will soon join the Cheesy family: one in Prague 1 and the other in northern Moravia.

Take a deep breath through your nose in a Cheesy shop, and it’s easy to smell why the chain has been successful. This is the kind of place mice must dream about ascending to when they meet the Great Big Mickey In The Sky. There’s cheese everywhere. Big wheels on shelves, plastic-wrapped packages under glass, large blocks in a cooler–all waiting to be chiseled by the extremely competent “cheese men,” as Yura calls his well-trained, informative shopkeepers.

Not only will the cheese men (and cheese women) carve off paper-thin slices from any hunk of cheese you want to taste, they are also quite capable of making a pairing recommendation from the small selection of wines the shops sell.

If wine and cheese are just too traditional a coupling for you, you might want to select your beverages from the rack of the Belgian Trappist ales and lambics (fruit beers) that are also on offer. Yura says he choose these drinks to offer because of the unique pairing opportunities. His recommendation is to drink them at room temperature, likening them more to a type of wine than something you’d quaff from a pint glass at the pub. In fact, some of his lambics have an alcohol content of 20%, definitely putting them in a class by themselves.

I tried the Pecheresse, an artisanal lambic from Lindemans that looked like liquid copper and had nice peach overtones that somehow gave the beer bite rather than turning it into a dessert drink.

Speaking of dessert, honey is also on offer at the Letná shop. It is grown locally in the Český Kras area and it being tested out at the Letná store to gauge interest before rolling it out to other shops–standard operating procedure at Cheesy.

Another Cheesy policy is that 80-90% of what the franchises carry is identical to what is carried in the shops Yura owns himself. This way, he explained, creates uniformity but lets the store owners have some choice in what they sell. For stores located outside Prague, this can mean the ability to showcase local cheeses and other regional products.

Honey, wine and lambics aside, the real reason you come to any Cheesy store is, of course, for the cheese. Most of the selection comes from Holland, but the shop does feature cheese from Italy and Switzerland as well. There are over a dozen types of Gouda alone, including those flavored with olives, pesto and chilies, as well as an aged variety that sometimes has three years under its wax wrapper. There is approximately a 60/40 split between cow cheeses and those made from sheep or goat milk. In fact, Yura says that Cheesy was instrumental in helping introduce the local palate to goat cheeses–something that wasn’t always appreciated here.

Maybe the worst part about Cheesy is that other people shop there too. So you can’t keep the “cheese man” all to yourself, eating your way through the superb surprises that each delicate slice of cheese brings to your palate. Instead, you have to content yourself with a few minutes of his time and a take-home bag that holds maybe only three-percent of what’s on offer. But that’s OK. With seven shops in town, you can give yourself permission to go Cheesy every day of the week.