Cheese Monger Memoirs - The Beginning

I'm going to be creating a new line of posts called "Cheese Monger Memoirs" which pretty much will detail how The Cheese Shop on Park came to be in an anecdotal manner.  First up is the very first day the idea of The Cheese Shop was born.

It was the day after Thanksgiving 2006 and my wife and I were waking up in my brother's old bedroom in my mother's house.  The bed is one of those trundle beds that is a single bed that has another single bed underneath so two people can sleep on it, albeit uncomfortably.  My brother, who turns 50 next year, used this bed when he was a child and I'm pretty sure it was an antique then and to the best of my knowledge, neither mattress has ever been replaced.  Needless to say, my back was killing me.

My mother lives in northern New Jersey, Paramus to be precise.  Having lived in central Florida for the past 13 years at that point means the 40 degree temperature was rather cool.  Now as my wife can tell you, nobody likes a "cool" bedroom like I do, but for whatever reason, my mother sets the heat at something like 62 so along with the worn out mattress and skimpy comforter (also dating back to my brother's youth I'm sure) the day was off to a frosty and aching start.

The bedroom furniture is not the only part of my mother's house that could use some updating.  Still, to this day, there is no coffee maker (nor microwave) in the kitchen.  Unless you count this age old percolator that takes roughly half an hour to make coffee that is.  And since my mother drinks instant coffee (yuk!...I'm a coffee snob just like a wine snob and a cheese snob...well you get the idea) who knows how old the Maxwell House Coffee in her on the counter container is.  I'm thinking the 1990s at least.

My wife and I get dressed and head out in search of your neighborhood Starbuck's.  Not knowing where the closest one is, we head one town over to Ridgewood, where their Main Street area (Ridgewood Ave) was our best bet other than trying Route 17.  (Route 17 for those not familiar with Paramus's highways is a nightmare to drive on any day let alone Black Friday).  We do find Starbuck's, get our coffees, and just start tooling around downtown Ridgewood.  There, amongst the boutiques, restaurants and such, is The Cheese Shop of Ridgewood.

Since we have always liked cheese, we ventured inside.  The shop was quite small with specialty grocery items along the back wall and refrigerated cases against the wall behind the counter.  A giant of a man was working (and when I say giant I mean huge) and he was not the nicest sort.  To illustrate his demeanor, while working with us a young girl who was probably about 12 walked in.  She was patiently waiting on line behind us when after about 10 minutes he barked out to her, "What do you want?"  She meekly asked if they have bagels to which he gruffly responded "NO!" and out she went.

The cheeses were amazing and after sampling 3, we selected 2 for purchase.  I asked for quarter pound cuts and when he said that he couldn't cut it that small I said we would take whatever he cut.  He then up sold us on some plum jelly (which he let us sample alongside our cheese) and a baguette as well.

As we happily left with our unexpected purchase, we both looked around and thought together how well a cheese shop would work on Park Ave.  Thus the dream began.