Random Interview: Dom: Lover of cheese and Cheese Stall Owner, Borough Market
By Kaf Blamire Saturday 3 July, 2010 15:18
Wandering through Borough Market in the late evening June sun is a warming experience. In the soft summer light office workers, with ties askew, unwind outside the pubs with pints in hand. The smell of cooking sausages drifts through the air, trains rumble overhead and the atmosphere is buzzing with post-work cheeriness. In all the bustling I met a man who has managed to turn his enthusiasm for cheese into a successful entrepreneurial adventure.
SNIPE: How did you discover your enthusiasm for cheese?
Dom: Well my earliest memories are of cheese. There was an old couple I used to visit. We would go round to their house for cheese and crackers. I still remember the flavours vividly, after that taste I continued to yearn for cheese. I also grew up on a farm and remember the churns of milk that were brought up from the cows.
S: How did you break into the cheese industry?
D: I came to London and saw an advert in the Ham and High that said “Do You Like Cheese?” and something twigged and so I responded and ended up working at Neals Yard Dairy serving cheese over the counter. I remember coming in on my first day and being hit with this over-powering repugnant smell and thinking—I don’t know if I can stand this, but it tasted delicious. Nine years later and I am still doing it.
S: How did you end up breaking out and selling cheese yourself?
D: It was never really the plan, I did a Master’s in philosophy but a friend had an idea of going to France and selecting a cheese to sell. He had the cash and I had the time. We only serve one cheese called Comté. We take a trip there every so often for five weeks. We try the cheese and try to enjoy all the local flavours the local area has to offer.
S: It must be a bit of an adventure. Any tales from your trips?
D: Well, now we go so often that we are quite efficient now. We fly into Geneva and hire a car. I do remember a time I was bought a drink in a bar. I thought it was a bit cloudy looking, and I found out after I drank it that the bottle had a huge black dead snake inside that had been drowned in there in the 1940s.
S: Were you annoyed about not being told about the snake?
D: No I was just in shock, trying to analyse how I felt.
S: Does cheese really give you nightmares or is it just a myth?
*D: Well if you take the Freudian approach, dreams are the guardians of sleep and if we have bodily disturbances our imagination creates a story around that feeling, but with good quality cheese you don’t get that indigestion or bodily upset.
S: What are the physical effects of eating too much cheese?
D: It has made me happier.
S: What do you like about working here in the market?
D: The freedom, there’s always a buzz here, but in some ways it has changed. There are more people coming through but less being bought. Borough Market has become very sucessful and in some ways success feeds itself. The products start being packaged in smaller sizes and the innovation gets a bit lost. In many ways it’s like a person. Initially at the beginning, people have boundless energy and then as you get to middle age, the energy and ideas become more managed and you become complacent, then you start to go a bit senile.
S: But surely the life of the market can go around in a circle and start getting back to the initial innovation?
D: Yeah, I still think there’s lots of life left in it, the raw ingredients are still in place, no pun intended, and there are still innovative traders here, like the guy who sells sausages.
S: Is it fair to say that cheese is your passion or has dictated the course of your life?
D: it is fundamental to my life. I get a bit disturbed if I know there isn’t any cheese in the house. I hesitate to use the word passion. It is a trite adjective that says nothing. People applying for jobs say “I have a passion..” but this is more like a love affair. There is so much more emotion going on in a love affair than just passion. I can’t imagine a a life without it. It is a temporamental thing, sometimes good, boring or interesting but it has a social aspect and that is vital.
S: Do you think we are losing touch with these social tools, like the importance of certain foods that help bring us together in a communal way?
D: Definitely… mass production is reducing products to numbers and quantities. We are not experiencing them. Cheese is a vital ingredient. It’s in so many things and is part of our everyday lives. It can invigorate our palates but also add to the enjoyment of life. So much of life can pass by without any peaks, and for me cheese is one of the peaks.
S: Do other people in your life love cheese as much as you?
D: Not as avidly, well except those who work in cheese. My young son doesn’t like cheese at all. If I give him a bit of cheese he just laughs. I am not sure why.
Visit Dom at his stall— The Borough Market Cheese Company, Borough Market, Southwark Street and try some cheese
