Just a few weeks after our sriracha supply was threatened, we have some urgent foodie news that is totally for real: halloumi cheese is officially in short supply and heading towards higher prices. Producers of the cheese that you can grill or fry without it turning into goo are warning of double-digit price increases thanks to a ferocious fondue of climbing demand and instability in economically ravaged Cyprus, the only nation that can produce it.
"When we started some years ago, we sold to the ethnic market," stated John Pittas, president of Pittas, the largest supplier of halloumi, whom we caught working at 7:30 PM in his Cyprus offices. "All of a sudden, we had a program promoting it, in 2007-2010, that made the product very well known, and the main market now is not ethnic, it's the mainstream."
Leading the charge were national chains like Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, whose customers strained the manufacturing chain more than ever. Since halloumi is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) product, only cheese made in Cyprus, with Cypriot sheep and goat milk, can bear the name. Besides space, there's another problem: money. The Cypriot farmers can only produce the milk for about half the year and normally depended on agricultural banks for loans to help get them through the other half. Many of these banks have closed in the global economic crises of the past few years, or have scaled way back on what they can offer in terms of financing.
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