Sunday, July 29, 2018 3:33 PM

The new cheesemonger wears an unlabeled baseball cap and a Gravity Crash t-shirt. He's fairly young, but is already missing many of his teeth. I ask him for the least expensive cheese that I see in the deli case, a tenth or less of the price of what surrounds it. He doesn't recognize the name and comes around front to look. I point. He nods and retrieves the block of cheese from the case. The woman next to me looks up. "Have you tried it? How do you use it?" In omelettes, I tell her, and in sandwiches. The cheesemonger starts to slice the cheese then stops. "I can make it thinner, OK?" I nod. He turns a dial on the slicer, puts the cheese that's already been through it in and runs it again, then removes the cheese and packages it. "And for you, ma'am?" he asks the other customer. "I'll have the same thing," she says. "Really? Would you like to taste it first?" She shakes her head. "If he likes it, I'll try it." Not everyone likes the cheap cheese. I hope it works well for her.