Day Sixty - Eight : A trip downtown

This afternoon, I ventured down to the Essex Street Market to go to their two fantastic cheese stores. In case you aren't familar, the Essex Street Market was established in 1940 to give street pushcart merchants a new way to do business, inside, in a confined space, where neighborhood residents could come for a one stop shopping experience. Over the years, the market has gone from primarily Jewish purveyors to Puerto Rican and now it has become a diverse mixture of a little bit of every ethnicity. Need some classic Mexican ingredients, or a wide variety of spices or homemade breads or fresh meats and cheeses or homemade chocolates, you name it, you can find it there. The special thing about the Essex Street Market is it truly is still a nieghborhoody sort of place, stocked full of mom and pop speciality places.

Of these mom and pop places there are two cheese purveyors that are pretty much as different as two cheese places could be -- Saxelby Cheesemongers and Formaggio Essex. Saxelby, a small cheese counter space,  offers a selection of small production American farmstead cheeses, with a strong focus on cheeses produced in the North East. This is the place to go if you want to support the American artisanal cheese movement, you can find some fantastic and unique cheeses! Lazy Lady farm's Capriola is especially good right now; a bloomy rind goat's milk cheese aged for just two weeks at the farm in Westfield, VT. However it is worth exploring a variety of the seasonally changing cheeses that Saxelby stocks, I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

On the other end of the spectrum is Formaggio Essex, also fantastic, but completely different. In this little shop, you can find a lovely variety of olive oils, vinegars, jams, honeys, cured meats, and a primarily European cheese selection. There might be a few American cheeses but the majority are small run imported babies from across the pond. The store is meant to be more of a "market experience" and it sure does stock a variety of artisanal products from around the globe. The staff there can guide you through exactly what you are in the mood for. Today I decided to buy a little bit of five month aged pasteurized goat's milk cheese from France, Tomme de Chevre do Moully. This was a fresh, semi soft, tangy, grassy, delish goat's milk cheese. A delicate and refined cheese, perfect without an accompaniment. It is aged in larger format wheels than one tends to see for goat's milk cheeses.  Either way, you can't go wrong! Pick up a nice loaf of bread at the newly opened Pain D'Avignon to go with your cheeses.

I encourage you to take a trip down to the Essex Street Market, whether its for the cheeses or Roni-Sue's chocolates or Porto Rico's Coffee Company's coffee or Shopsin's renowned mac n'cheese pancakes or some fresh produce or some of Pain D'Avignon's homemade breads. I guarantee you won't be disappointed. Enjoy your Saturday folks!