La fromagerie Goncourt : la plus conviviale

I don’t really have a favorite cheese, I like to change things up. But I do have a soft spot for the classics: a good Compté or Saint-Nectaire, for example.

I really don’t like Timanoix. It’s a monastic cheese from Brittany, made out of cow milk and soaked in a nut liqueur.

Any and all occasions! I eat a lot of cheese at work: we have cheese for breakfast, cheese for lunch and cheese as an aperitif. It allows us try our cheeses and make sure that they’re good quality. I eat a lot at home as well, whether in this morning for breakfast (I have no limits, even a strong washed rind cheese doesn’t scare me) or in the evening as an aperitif before dinner. I prefer to snack on cheese rather than peanuts, I find it’s a more healthy snack. I’m also a big fan of raclette (even if I really don’t like winter sports). And we sell a lot of raclette. Every year we organize a weeklong Raclette Festival in January and February. During the week, which has been christened #RacletteWeek, we organize a competition to see who can eat the most raclette and throw in prizes.

We sell a lot of Brocciu, especially now that we’ve moved into Summer. It’s a Corsican cheese, sort of like Ricotta, but much better quality, made with sheep or goat milk and produced on a small scale. They just came in. By the way you can do a lot of pairings with Brocciu: spread it on toasted bread with olive oil and pepper or pair it with brandy. You can even eat it as a dessert like a real Corsican. It doesn’t seem to be super well known.

Our little reindeer mascot, Elfi, has been with us since we opened the cheese shop. He’s been our good luck charm for the past six years. Whenever we break record sales he starts making music. And seeing how he has Christmas clothes on he helps decorate the shop over the holidays.

I’d really like to thank my dad Luigi, who has been a huge help. He’s helped us with everything since he retired. You see these little nuts, for example? He’s the one who cracked them open, with his own little hands. He doesn’t work in the store but he does a lot of odd jobs to help us out. He’s the one who set us up with our cheese cellars.