It has been an extraordinary meal. You've savored your ceviche of fluke, devoured the hanger steak in bordelaise sauce, and quaffed, with your tablemates, a nice bottle of Saint-Emilion. What could cap all that?
How about a nice Vacherin-Fribourgeois? A Hoch-Ybrig? A Wabash Cannonball? How about a nice hunk of cheese?
At more and more of the country's finest restaurants, it's becoming a staple: the cheese course. A waiter produces a special menu, or a fromagier (yes, a fromagier) rolls out a glass-covered, marble-topped cart and asks you to choose anywhere from 3 to-why not?-13 wedges of exotic, often smelly curdled milk product from around the world. The result can and should be an eye-opening, palate-astonishing experience.
But navigating that experience? A social and gustatory minefield. Max McCalman, the maître de fromage (yes, maître de fromage) at Picholine, one of New York's finest restaurants, offers the following tips on how to make the most of it. The cheese course at Picholine-some 60 varieties strong-is almost certainly the country's best, and McCalman is perhaps the only person in America who works full-time as a fromagier. He knows what he's talking about.
Be Sheepish
In the broadest sense, there are three categories of cheeses: cow's milk, sheep's milk, and goat's milk. Dazzle your colleagues and clients with this connoisseur's rule of thumb: Cow's milk makes the best butter; goat's milk makes the best drinking milk; and sheep's milk makes the best cheese. Then ask your fromagier: "What sheep's-milk cheeses do you have today?" In the unlikely event he hems and haws, wow your companions again by asking if he's got a good Roquefort; Roqueforts, among the best-liked intense cheeses, are always made from sheep's milk.
Maintain Order
A well-served cheese course is presented in a carefully considered order, from mildest to strongest. Follow it. "It happens all the time," McCalman says. "I'll describe the cheeses and explain that they're presented in the order that I recommend trying them. And then I'll set the plate on the table, and invariably someone will dive into the Roquefort. After tasting something like that, it's going to be difficult to detect the subtleties in the flavors of the milder cheeses." If your love of, say, blues makes this advice impossible to follow, order a range of cheeses within one variety.
Mellow Out
Want to come off like a rube? Say something like "I want your strongest, stinkiest cheese." "I get it all the time," McCalman says. "I know people want stronger flavors, but there are some great mild cheeses."
Mind the Wine
A lasting dogma regarding wine and cheese holds that a big cheese needs a big wine. True in some cases, McCalman says, patently false in others. A full-bodied Bordeaux, for example, can overpower even an intense cheese like a Cabrales from Spain, and an intense cheese, in turn, can destroy the integrity of a fine wine. If you're having only one wine with your cheese course, consider a relatively uncomplicated white-a Pinot Blanc or a Vouvray, McCalman suggests. Or go all out and ask your waiter to serve up a flight of wines chosen to go with your flight of cheeses.
Watch the Wisecracks
Finally: "Please don't ask for Kraft Singles or Velveeta," McCalman says. "I've heard that line hundreds of times. How many times do I have to hear it before I just explode?"
