The Cheese Plate

me and my husband made a reservation to come in one saturday to enjoy and try the cheese fondue — on arrival we were met by the owner who acted like he had no idea why we were there and proceeded to inform us he didnt have the accompaniments that go along with the cheese fondue, offered some boiled potatoes instead — ummm no thanks. he was clearly not ready for us, we had to sit and wait a while for it to be ready. the fondue was pretty good but we were served plain white bread instead of french bread. thought we would give him another chance, made reservations again to come and have the cheese plate sampler, were even intending on buying a bottle of wine — once again, on arrival, he acted like he had no idea why we were there, acted like he was put out, and kept questioning why we were there! i have never been treated so poorly by a shop owner, how he stays in business is beyond me. a note: several months ago i tried to buy a specific amount of cheese and they had no idea how to weigh it or how to convert the amount, this is pretty elementary, when you are selling items by weight you should know how to convert!

I found out about The Cheese Plate when we had dinner at Frederick’s in Islington. We ordered a cheese plate for dessert, and the cheese was fantastic. So we asked them where they got their cheese, and they told us about The Cheese Plate.
We live in Enfield, so we’re fairly close-​ish to Buntingford. Not really close, but it’s about a half an hour drive. Given it can take us as long to get into London by train and tube, it’s not that ridiculous for us to drive that far for cheese. Really.
And who knew there’d be such an amazing cheese shop in a such a small town in the UK. You walk in and you can smell the cheese. That’s how awesome it is. Plus it wasn’t incredibly busy when we were there, so we got some excellent service. The woman waiting on us gave us some excellent cheeses to try. We ended up with a brie, a calvados soaked camembert, a wine soaked blue and some great cheddar. We also picked up some biscuits (which turned out to be some of the best ones I’ve had in the UK).
We even dropped the name of Frederick’s where we tried the cheese. The owner was ecstatic. Apparently some people from the restaurant had been in on Wednesday and asked if anyone had come in after having cheese in the restaurant. Apparently the answer was no. Until today. Awesome.
It’s not conveniently close. But it’s not too far for us. It’s a great shop with some great cheeses. I think they even had some jars of chutney as well. And some wine. You can also go in for some cheese or raclette to eat in. The website says that they do cheese tasting nights as well that we may have to try out some time.