Thursday, March 06, 2008

Auckland Cheese Fest more like Auckland Snooze Fest

I need to say that I really enjoy most kinds of cheese. Soft cheese, hard cheese, mold ripened, flavored cheese, blue cheese, pump cheese for nachos at Circle-K. You name it, I will eat it so when I heard that there was an Auckland Cheese Festival where you pay $35 and eat as much cheese as you want I got fairly excited.

The doors opened at 5:00 and we thought that we would get there early to beat the crowds. At 5:00 the place was already packed as it looked like they oversold the venue. It was so packed that you would have to push your way to the front to get a couple chunks of cheese and then scamper off to a quiet corner to nibble on it like a scared mouse.

Another huge problem that I had with the cheese there was that it was all mid-level supermarket cheese quality. There was one whole table that was just Fontera cheddar. This is the basic utilitarian block cheese for burritos. I taste that every day. The brie was below average quality. There was some decent hard goats cheese but I kept coming back to the fact that the cheese tasting table at the French Market in Parnell was substantially better quality and selection.

The $70 that Roberta and I paid to taste some grocery store cheese was completely overpriced. All 5 of us should have spent that money on cheese from the French Market and had a party instead.

The only good part of the night was that Darin, Roberta and I went to the casino and put $40 down on Roulette and came out $70 ahead which dropped the overall price of the night to a much more acceptable level. Roberta picked the winning number of 21. We are going to be dragging her back to the casino against her will.

Wow, my first real rant post. It feels good. Expect more of these.

2 comments:

Miss Erin Fae said...

I'm moving to AKL soon. As someone who is a cheese loving new yorker, this entry totally terrifies me. I am so nervous about not being able to find good cheese in NZ. I have been so spoiled by my ability get amazing cheese whenever i want. So i now have French Market in Parnell on my list, any other places you've discovered?

King Nerd said...

Hello Miss Fae. If you want some more tips and tricks for Auckland please feel free to email me at adam dot dershewitz at gmail dot com. We actually just moved back to the states after 4 years in NZ.