I caught up with Kent Walker Artisan Cheese owner and head cheese-maker Kent Walker during the midst of an ambitious construction project that will transform the former Diamond Bear Brewing space at 323 Cross St. into a space dedicated to making, aging, learning about and (most important to me) eating cheese. A cheese-tasting room in Little Rock? When you hear him talk about how it will work — cheeses matched with various local beers and wines, all in the cozy former taproom — it sounds so crazy (and crazy delicious) that it just might work. After all, Stone's Throw Brewing has been offering a popular Kent Walker cheese plate since their inception, and armed with ample knowledge of cheese flavors work and how they pair with alcohol, Walker is the perfect man to lead the charge in the fight to bring back the classic cheese tray in his own space.
The main construction work is right in the beginning stages, and will see the former brewing area transformed into offices, a cheese production area, and a cheese packaging area. This is a bigger undertaking than it first appears, requiring the installation of drop-down ceilings and other safeguards that will allow the cheese to be produced in a clean environment. Cheese is, after all, the product of an intricate dance between bacteria, enzymes, and sometimes even mold, and the goal is to maximize the critters that make cheese delicious while keeping out any foreign bodies that could contaminate the process. Because of the care that goes into insuring a clean production space, Walker doesn't plan to move his production to the new space for at least two months.
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