dlake02

Whole Foods every time. 4-Star Extra Mature Cheddar. Crumbles properly when you cut it, has that salty/rennet taste on the side of your tongue, grills WONDERFULLY on bread.

And Brie that tastes like cow not Polyfilla.

Off to Wholefoods in Palo Alto now....

N1cky

I wasn't complaining, I was recommending somewhere

Sally Redux

It is funny when you're back in England though and get some bog-standard supermarket cheese, and it tastes fantastic.

Bob

Aye, even the economy own brand ain't bad, at least aged as long as regular cheese.

Though cheese has gotten much better here in recent years, but you still have to go get expensive cheese to get good stuff, can't just be a cheap block of own brand stuff :/

Steerpike

I know - it was a comment 'inspired by' yours, not in response to it I multi-quoted a bunch of posts ... it got too difficult to track them all ...

McZaki

Wifey complained and complained and complained about the bread when we moved to Dubai. I have weird kids, when it comes to bread, they ONLY like/eat wholemeal/wholegrain – it doesn’t even end here, they are very finicky about this – the bread has to be either ‘Allinson’ or “Kingsmill’s Tasty Wholemeal “ else the moaning choir kicks-in, ridiculous!! To be fair, the local bread you get in Dubai is rubbish but thankfully one of the supermaks imports Allinson and Kingsmill from Blighty. Wifey is hoping for a better 'bread experience' in the states...

Bob

Good luck...but like on the cheese front, it has improved over the last couple of years, and bakeries or expensive places like Wholefoods do have good breads, but there's a massive difference in quality from the $5+ loaf compared to the own/main brand breads, which often are sweater.

Steerpike

I suspect part of the 'cheese' and 'bread' challenge faced by brits in the US is that the US is much more oriented towards French/Italian foods. I find the paremesans (Parmigiano) / reggiano / gorgonzola / etc cheeses here are fantastic (from the right sources), and you can get good brie, camembert, etc. And the French and Italian style breads are great too. Brits tend to like heavy, healthy, dark breads that are not common (in my experience) in France or Italy. So perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it's hard to find UK-style cheeses and breads in the US!

md95065

Really? That comes as a big surprise - for me Italian and French style breads are, and always have been, what I think of as being "real bread" ...

The thing to watch out for in California is sourdough bread which often looks as if it might be Italian/French in style but which, of course, tastes horrible ...

Sally Redux

Yes surprising comment - I think most Brits like white bread but not sweet.

dlake02

My god - when did you last go to France. Every town and village has it's own cheese and they are wonderful and different.

What I really miss is regional/local variance - there is no reason why every town in American couldn't have it's own bread/cheese/etc just as France, Italy, Germany and even the UK does. Unfortunately, the Americans just seem to prefer bland uniformity and "expect" to find "sharp cheese" in every supermarket in every town. Then they'd try and export that same expectation to every other town in the world if they were given half a chance....

Steerpike

Sourdough would be one of those true regional variations that dlake02 is pining for - unique indeed to SF. I happen to like sourdough, but that's neither here nor there.

So I continue to be mystified then ... I can go to my local safeway and get a half decent 'french baguette' or an Italian 'pugliesi' or 'ciabata'. I can go to Whole Foods and get all manner of delightful variants on these - thick crust, thin cust, soft crust, hard crust, seeded, non-seeded, etc etc. So while every US Supermarket does offer a shocking amount of ultra-crap 'Wonderbread' stuff, they do have good stuff also. I must say, I'm basing this mainly on the Bay Area, but I do hang out in Scottsdale most of the time these days and I do see a decent selection at my local Safeway and Fry's. And of course the Whole Foods there has a big range. I just found a local Italian Deli in Scottsdale that has the most wonderful bread I've ever tasted (in a long while, anyway ...).

So I assumed it was people lamenting the lack of wholeweat/96-grain stuff that I have been assaulted with when back in the UK, which does seem somewhat unique to the UK.

I don't think one has to have been to France recently to enjoy the range of cheeses and breads ... I think they've been that way for some time . My point is simply that you can get a good range of quality cheeses at quality outlets in the US. If you want to be constantly surprised by some new local discovery, then yes, I can imagine the US can be found lacking - that's why you fly to Europe for vacations .

Bob

No, personally, that's got nothing to do with it, around where I've been at least.

You can and do get great cheese and bread, but the difference is, it does cost a lot more and you've got to look out for it.

You can't just go to the regular bread counter at the grocery store and find a decent cheap loaf or a block of cheese. It's either poor quality and/or crap or it's expensive but not necessarily better and so you have to head off to some special part of the grocery store that has the better stuff, deli counter area or what not.

There are some fantastic cheddars, stiltons and all kinds of Brit cheeses and breads locally though, from NH, VT, ME and MA.

Trader Joes is usually the most affordable for cheeses and breads for a chain grocery store.

I guess the difference here is, you probably don't think anything of $15lbs for cheese as being bad, but that's pretty damn expensive for me, where the drop to $5lbs is massive in quality, where as it wasn't such a huge gap in the UK. Same for bread if you don't have a qualm about $8 loaf of bread, but with a couple of kids, there's just no way we're doing that, even the crap bread is $2-3.50 and we find even that getting expensive.

Sally Redux

I don't know Steerpike, you always seem to be mystified by the British.