After moving from Paris to D.C. in 2013, Anastasia Mori was struck by many cultural differences between France and the United States. But one thing stood out to the future wine bar owner: Washington’s lack of cheese and charcuterie eateries, like those that line the Parisian cityscape. “Americans love their meat; they love their cheese; they love their wine,” Mori said. Why, she thought, weren’t there more places like that here?
Mori was not alone in noticing the scarcity of cheese spots in the District. According to Rachel Juhl, head of education at artisan cheese importer and wholesaler Essex St. Cheese, D.C. is known to some in the industry as the “black hole of cheese.” That’s not to say there haven’t been good cheese shops: Bowers Fancy Dairy Products in Eastern Market has been operating in the area since 1964, for instance, and the whimsical Cheesetique has been a Northern Virginia fixture since 2004. But industry veterans like Juhl found the cheese market here tough to crack.
“It’s a chicken-and-egg thing,” Juhl said, referring to the self-perpetuating problem of a lack of distributors transporting goods to D.C., meaning a lack of cheese shops opening. “The logistics have always been really, really difficult, which is always bizarre,” Juhl explained, because in D.C. “you have major distributors leaving New York to go to Atlanta and they have to pass by.”
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