I’ve always had an affinity for cheese—an inexplicable yet overwhelming penchant for the stuff. It easily ranks among my favorite food items, along with Chinese xiao longbao and pepperoni pizza. If I were to select a single dish to eat for the rest of my life, it would unequivocally contain cheese. The mere thought of having the rich, golden, and impossibly savory sensation of cheese creamily drifting along the length of my tongue, eliciting a marvelous response from my taste buds and sending shivers throughout my face, is almost enough to send me rushing to the local grocery store, scouring the aisles for that-which-I-covet-most, and then speeding back so that I can experience the magnificence of cheese, in private and with nobody else—save, of course, for my precious cheese. I’m still questioning what intentions the one who first discovered milk might have had when they squatted next to that cow and tugged, but I’m certainly not complaining. Their discovery, however dubious or unethical the actions preceding it, ultimately resulted in the creation of cheese, which I consider to be one of the most impactful events in the course of human history. My very happiness practically hinges on the edible gold we derive from milk, and without it, well, I wouldn’t be me.
Even I cannot accurately explain my strong fondness for cheese. I can say with certainty it doesn’t take root in my heritage; my parents both hail from China, a country where, at least in its traditional cuisine, cheese is about as scarce an ingredient as silicone or Styrofoam. Cheese is such a novel introduction to Chinese cuisine, and East Asian cuisine in general, that the Chinese word for “cheese” is qisi. You might find it a little odd how I’m making such a fuss over the Chinese pronunciation of cheese, but I assure you, there’s a good explanation. You see, other relatively modern words or phrases originating from foreign languages, “hamburger,” “Kentucky-Fried Chicken,” “Trump,”’ have their Chinese pronunciations solely based on their foreign ones. The Chinese counterpart of “Trump,” for example, is telangpu, which, strange though it may seem, actually sounds quite like the real deal if articulated correctly. People in China didn’t need a way to say “Trump” in their native language until very recently. The same goes for the word “cheese”; cheese hadn’t been introduced to most restaurant menus in China until a few decades ago. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that, because my parents didn’t eat a lot of cheese in their food as kids, they don’t incorporate cheese in any of the dishes they cook; my home environment doesn’t readily expose me to cheese.
However, I live in the United States, a country whose citizens view cheese, largely as a result of its central importance in the construction of the classic American hamburger, as an ingredient only surpassed in importance by beef, bacon, and cornstarch. Heck, by the norms surrounding hamburgers in American society, you can even apply a cheese-relevant form of Constitutivism (Cheestitutivism?) when assessing the quality of one: A good hamburger has cheese. No, I don’t sound dogmatic. I’m simply speaking the irrefutable truth. Cheese is essential, absolutely essential, to our culture.
Like all good foods, cheese is extremely versatile. It’s compatible with practically anything: with sandwich bread, an absolute classic; with pasta, equally as classic; on pizza dough, well, a pizza without cheese is analogous to a soup without salt; with cake, the namesake of a “factory” corporation and many of its palatable trademark “products”; eggs, l’omelette au fromage est très bien; with fruits, novel and artistic—also explored in this combination a few paragraphs down; with rice, a little esoteric, but certainly still acceptable; and of course, with itself, doubly as delightful, stupendous, creamy, and magnificent.
As much as I adore cheese, my familiarity with its varieties is surprisingly small. One would expect that, provided with how ardent my love for cheese is, I would know roughly as much about it as Gordon Ramsay, Guy Fieri, or Jamie Oliver, all famous and eminent professional chefs. However, I do not—I cannot tell Colby apart from sliced gouda, nor can I tell the difference between a spicy slice of Swiss and one of pepper jack with holes in it. I understand that it makes me look like a complete and utter fraud, a simple boy who loves a thing that he cannot bring himself to truly understand, but as deep as my passion might go, my knowledge of cheese is about as shallow as a street puddle.
To illustrate, American used to be my favorite variety of cheese. Yes, I know—American. Usually, the very sight of American cheese is enough to send any self-respecting chef or culinary expert howling out of the room. I am of the humble opinion that we’ll get a celebrity who’s truthful with their taxes before we see a slice of American cheese in any Michelin-star restaurant. Even the American government is in agreement with the general public regarding the healthiness of American cheese: the FDA’s overly technical, scientific, and baffling nomenclature has American cheese down as “pasteurized processed American cheese food.” Cheese food. Those two words alone give American cheese the air of some futuristic, synthetic substance, created by abstruse means and fed to the poor denizens of some dystopian world—a world where, in the absence of culinary heroes like Martha Stewart and Bobby Flay, the tyrannical government has a flag with a sickeningly yellow slice of American cheese at its center. American Eighty-Four, by Gouda Orwell—doesn’t sound too bad, actually.
And yet, from about when I was in first grade to when I was in sixth grade, I liked it. In fact, I coveted it. I remember the summer of kindergarten when I stayed with my cousins in Texas for the first time. Their family had two stacks of American cheese in the fridge, each constructed of roughly twenty slices of the stuff, pure and unsullied by any other substances; they both disappeared in a matter of days following my arrival. Amazing people, amazing place, amazing summer, but the cheese most definitely wasn’t as amazing as it could have been, especially not for my health.
It’s hardly a wonder why the first thing my friend Brady said to me after the first grade had started was, “Why do you have more chins than last year?” Thankfully, I have since lost all the weight I gained, but the vestigial folds in my belly have taught me a valuable lesson: American cheese is the insidious, scheming devil among this world’s cheeses. Where the aims of the renowned mozzarella and the benevolent cottage cheese are to make you lean, tall, and lanky—qualities desired by many in this world, the only item on American cheese’s agenda is to bolster your body fat supply to the extremes.
Despite all this, my general lack of knowledge when it comes to the details, intricacies, and subtle minutia of cheese certainly hasn’t interfered with that euphoric feeling of gratification I get whenever the familiar taste of cheese spreads across my tongue. Back in Texas, I was admittedly blind, foolish, and wholly ignorant of the perils of gulping down mouthful after mouthful of American cheese, but I was happy. Yes, I was happy. “Do what makes you happy in life” is as ubiquitous a saying as “Break a leg” or “No pain, no gain,” and with good reason: as long as you’re happy, you can impart some of your happiness to others. Ridiculously enough, I derive much of my happiness from eating cheese—but hey, at the end of the day, if eating cheese makes me happy, which in turn makes others happy, then I believe that eating cheese is a pretty
good idea. Even if that cheese has a criminal alias of “pasteurized processed American cheese food”.
Behind the bar of the Cheesy Wheeler Pub, a location popular among underground criminals, Gorgonzola: “Psst, Brie, you heard about what happened last night?”
Brie, a refined hitman, sets his glass of lactobacillus on the counter: “No, ‘Zola. What happened?”
“They say a guy took down five big-bellied humans in a McDonald’s last night. Hit ‘em with the CVD. They’re in the hospital right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them’s hearts has given out by now.”
Raising his cheesy eyebrows: “Issat so? Gimme the guy’s name.”
In a whisper so that Feta, the bartender, won’t hear: “They call him Pasteurized Processed American Cheese Food.”
This manages a shiver from Brie. He reaches for his glass again, only to nearly knock it over. The hitman’s composure has been shattered by the mere mention of a name, one which belongs to the lone cheese seeking to wipe out every other kind by spreading its influence to all reaches of the globe. Brie knows he has connections, more than even himself, a hitman with more hires than any cheese on the planet. In fact, Brie suspects that many of his clients might actually be tied with him. To top things off, Brie, despite being well sought-after, doesn’t exactly have a spotless track-record; he’s let his targets get away more times than he could possibly count. American, on the other hand…
The revelation hits.
“They’re gonna get rid of me,” Brie says quietly, his eyes wider than the holes in a slice of swiss.
“Sorry, wha–” Gorgonzola is interrupted by the sound of wood being fractured. Splinters of the pub’s door fly from behind them, and a few catch Brie in the back. He turns around.
“Mother of Mozzarella…”
In the ruined doorway stands a slice wearing a lurid orange suit, the Tommy gun in his hands still smoldering.
Entrez le fromage américain. Il veut tuer Brie.
You know, my love for cheese has managed to influence my preferences pertaining to subjects besides just food. If you grew up during the 2010’s—yes, that absolutely sublime period in which the Internet began to flourish into the chaotic hellscape we all know and love today—and you had some semblance of a childhood, you’ve probably watched the movie Ratatouille.
You know, the one with the rat who has an impressive, albeit slightly preternatural, talent for cooking French dishes. Heck, even if you’re an adult, especially one with kids, there’s a significant chance that you’ve sat yourself down in front of some screen and endured that one hour and fifty-one minutes of a rodent-themed fever dream. But it wasn’t only rodent-themed, at least not for me. You see, the scene that I remember the most vividly from that movie isn’t any of the ones set in a kitchen; it isn’t the scene where Remy, the movie’s fantastic rat
protagonist, falls into a sewer, or the one where Anton Ego, the pallid food critic with a face strangely reminiscent of that of a moai statue, takes a bite of ratatouille and gets catapulted back into his childhood—no, it’s not any of the memorable ones. The scene I remember the most vividly happens, and not by coincidence, to be the one where Remy takes both a piece of cheese and a strawberry in his paws, and discovers putting the distinct, fruity twang of the strawberry and the bold, sensational taste of the cheese together produces a novel, eclectic flavor. A bombastic, tremendous rush on the tastebuds whose discovery somehow warrants the cueing of jazz music and the vibrant flashing of red and orange across the screen. And while the jazz music certainly made its contributions to that scene, the bits where Remy puts the cheese in his mouth, the one where he tastes it individually, then the one where he combines it with the strawberry, are what make the scene particularly memorable.
Six-year-old me, in the living room, watching Ratatouille on a DVD: “Mom, look! The rat’s eating cheese! He looks so happy, and the cheese looks tasty too!”
My mother, sprawled on the couch and utterly exhausted from work, scrolling through her contacts on her phone: “Mhm, yeah. I like cheese too, honey. Maybe we could get some tomorrow—it’s too late now.”
The very presence of cheese in a movie scene makes it all the more powerful for me—maybe not for everyone else, but definitely for me.
And it’s not just Ratatouille. When I watched Tom and Jerry as a kid, I found it a little easier to sympathize with Jerry rather than with Tom because, much like me, Jerry had an overpowering desire for cheese. The Geronimo Stilton series, which follows the colorful adventures of a mouse whose namesake happens to be a variety of cheese, was one of my favorites because the plots of many of the series’ installments revolved around cheese—in fact, the titles of six books in the Geronimo Stilton series contain the word “cheese.” For me, cheese- related media outshine practically every other kind.
My love for cheese has always run deep, and yet, I still find myself without a good explanation why it is so. By “good,” I mean an explanation that isn’t extremely subjective, personally tailored, or flippant. A “bad” explanation would be somewhat like the one, and only one, that I currently have—cheese tastes good. But it’s not exactly a “bad” explanation. My liking of cheese doesn’t harm anyone, nor does it directly conflict with anyone’s personal beliefs or ideals—unless you are vegan, of course, in which case I gravely apologize for how uncomfortable this entire piece has most likely made you. That’s the thing with personal preferences: it’s sometimes a little difficult to explain them to others because, well, they’re personal. They make sense largely to yourself only, and it’s often difficult to discern whether others have similar tastes, especially if you’ve only just met them. But that’s what makes it all the more magical—that feeling of wholesome connection you get when you find out someone you barely know likes the same thing you do. That feeling when you’re wearing some merchandise, and someone in the room says, “Hey, I like that show, too.” Or when you’re on the bus watching a YouTube video and the guy peering over your shoulder suddenly says, “I think that guy’s hilarious.” That feeling you get when you establish an unexpected link between yourself and someone new, with your common interest mediating the connection. It’s gratifying to find, get to know, and discuss things with others who share your interests because, well, in talking to them, you’re essentially just talking to a facet of your personality that’s been placed in someone else’s body. In fact, that’s exactly the reason why I believe conventions exist: to allow
people opportunities to meet with others in events centered around themes, things, or franchises that they all love. It’s simply magical when you find someone with your taste, especially where you wouldn’t normally expect it.
You know, if I really wanted to—and if such a thing even existed in the first place, of course—I would probably get a spray bottle full of cheese-scented Febreze. It definitely wouldn’t be blue cheese though.
