Beecher's Handmade Cheese

If you have any love for cheese (and aside from the vegan abstainer and the lactose intolerant, who doesn't?), than Beecher's Handmade Cheese is a dairy wonderland. It's Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, in miniature, only with cheese instead of chocolate, and smiling cheese-mongers replacing the oompa-loompas. All cheese, all the time. And it's delicious.

Cheese lover Kurt Beecher Dammeier had a vision: to combine his love of fermented, curded dairy with his firm personal commitment to artisan, slow foods and opened Beecher's in 2003. Since then, the small shop with glass-enclosed cheese-making "lab" has been dishing up decadent mac-and-cheese lunch specials as well as hawking their own variety of handmade cheeses (including extremely addictive fresh cheese curds--mild, slightly salty nuggets that squeak delightfully between your teeth).

There's a zillion other varieties of cheese available, both made by Beecher's or by other small cheese makers, but the in-house varieties remain the stand-out. Beecher's makes the aforementioned cheese curds, as well as an aged Flagship cheese, which comes in a raw milk version as well as different flavored varieties such as the sweet/spicy No Woman, which is laced with brown sugar, clove and Jamaican jerk spice. They also make a spreadable "blank slate," an unaged fresh soft cheese that is cream cheese's more refined cousin.

Finicky kids who aren't cheese aficionados also love a trip to Beecher's. Cheese makers are continually at work on the adjacent cheese making machinery and, even if they squick up their faces at the end products, the process is utterly (udderly?) fascinating.

HelloSeattle tip: Skip the up-sell crackers or flat breads. You can do better with the accoutrements elsewhere. Save your budget for cheese.

- by Caren Gussoff Sumption, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Caren Gussoff Sumption

Caren Gussoff Sumption is a freelance writer and editor from Seattle, WA. She's written for USA Today, the Seattle Times/NW Source, MSN and AOL, and her fiction has been published worldwide. She received her MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.