the cheese shop

I look forward to shopping for cheese the way some women look forward to a pedicure.

My particular favourite cheese shop is nestled in Kensington Market - Toronto's answer to Camden - around the corner from the fish markets and just up the street from the shop that sells I-don't-know-what but that always has reggae music blasting out the doorway.

The first thing that hits you when you walk through the door (glass, covered in cheese posters) is the smell. Cheese. Fermenting, aging, delicious cheese. On my inaugural visit I was so unprepared for the smell that my eyes watered. I may have stumbled, blinded by cheese fumes.

The shop isn't small, but it seems to be. Along the right hand wall is the service counter, with dockets helpfully numbered. Like going to the bank, cheese shoppers wait in a queue and wait for a free teller. When I am at the front of the line, I walk up to place my order with the cheese-teller. Except I can't see who I am talking to. The entire service counter is covered in a wall of cheese. Massive rounds and block are stacked taller than my head, and the window through which I am talking is above my eye level. I'm actually staring at the label of a jalapeño spiced Gouda.

I ask for Parmesan, and a few seconds later a sliver balanced precariously on a slicer descends over the Gouda. I pop it in my mouth and pronounce it delicious. The disembodied voice of my cheese-teller asks me how much I want and I hold my hands above my head in what I hope is a rough approximation of my weekly cheese consumption.

The voice tells me to pay down at the last docket, and I wind my way through other cheese buyers and head for the door. Ten dollars disappears and I'm shoving a healthy slab of Italy into my bag.

When I get home and open the package, a blast of smell rushes out of the wax paper.

The perfect excuse to make lasagna.