When I received an e-mail from Daily Candy about a new 3,000 foot cheese mecca my heart skipped a beat. Beecher's who hails from Seattle, boasted not only a huge cheese shop, but also a big windowed area where you can watch them make there own flag ship cheeses. Last Saturday I decided to check it out for dinner, which as I found out later was a bit of a mistake.
When I arrived about 8PM the cheese shop was closed and I was lead downstairs to the "cave", where wine and food is served. Cave is just a trendy word for basement. The atmosphere was nice and sheek. Couches, cow hide (faux) benches and sleek metal tables comprise the large room. The lighting was low and the ambiance was nice. One thing that I noticed was that the entire night the place was pretty much empty.
I was a bit surprised when I looked at the menu, perhaps I should have checked it out before hand. The cheapest bottle of wine was about 50 bucks. Most of the wine ranged from 80-400 dollars! Yikes! I picked out the cheapest one which was pretty tasty. The menu annoyed me. There was not much a handful of cheese and a few meats, along with three or four dishes. The menu was hard to decipher since the cheese were labeled as something like, "Brown Family Farm, Vermont". Huh?! I don't think even a cheese connoisseur would be able to read that easily. What type of cheese is it? The meats had a similar problem. In the end I got the Beecher's Cheese Plate. The cheese was made there and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Service was pretty bad as it took about 30 minutes for the food to arrive. How long can it take to cut up some cheese? Servings were minimal. The middle cheese was only one small slice and for $6.00 it seemed absurd. The cheese was tasty and rich. However, all three of the cheeses tasted about the same (similar to cheddar)which was a disappointment. I like my cheese plates to have a bit of variety. About ten minutes after we got our cheese plate, the server said he forgot the crackers and we had to wait about five more minutes for those. Out came a small ramikin of home baked crackers. Taste was good but similar to Cheese It's. The meats weren't bad but nothing to write home about. They had a large fat quantity and one piece was almost pure fat.When it was time to pay I was shocked! The bill came out to $100!!! Double yikes!!! I didn't even feel like I got the dinner I went for. I had to go to CVS to pick up some snacks after since I was still hungry. Overall, I liked the atmosphere but it lacked the crowd. No one wants to go to an empty place. The wine was good, but there were only a couple of bottles that were in my under $75 dollar price range. The cheeses and meats were unimpressive. With all the local competition (see previous post on La Bierria and all of NY's fantastic cheese shops (i.e Murry's)) I don't know how long Beechers will be able to stay in business. It's nice enough but not at that price.