Chef Patrick Feury unwrapped the disks of Yellow Springs Farm goat cheese and wiped them down with the gentle touch usually reserved for newborns and puppies. It's all part of his process of aging the product himself, something he learned at cheese school in Vermont last year. When he picks up the goods from the Chester County makers, they are two weeks young. He matures them for two to three more weeks. "Part of serving them is making sure that the characteristics are at their best," says the chef of Nectar, in Berwyn. "I can take them from a dry chevre all the way to a Brie-like creaminess."
A chef putting this much care into a cheese plate is a rarity, especially because Feury runs the kitchen of an Asian-inspired eatery. His interest in cheese was sparked while training in Paris in the late '90s, but since he began to work with local cheese – all made within miles of the restaurant – he's downright smitten. "They are good products. I wouldn't serve them if they weren't."
Feury is doing more than babysitting and serving them at his restaurant. He's become the unofficial ambassador for the Chester County Cheese Artisans, a newly formed group of eight cheese producers who are hoping that their high-quality, diverse products will one day be as well known as Sonoma wine, Vermont cheese, or Maryland crabs.
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