You Say Stilcheechon, I Say Stilton

I was confounded by a cheese last month at Gramercy Tavern. When one of the servers brought out an end of meal cheese plate, he ran through the four offerings and introduced a blue with a name that sounded like “stilcheechon” and added, “it’s different from Stilton.”

First I thought salchichon, but clearly it wasn’t sausage, then I started mentally questioning his pronunciation (when I first moved to NYC I was convinced that culantro was a misspelling because I’d never heard of it). He did have a strong accent, which I actually appreciated (it’s nice seeing Latinos and South Asians working front of the house, especially in light of last year’s Boulud lawsuit) and he clearly knew what he was talking about so I was the clueless one.

Later, I tried Googling spelling variations (stilchichon, stiltchichon, stilcheechon) and came up short. But thanks to The Kitchn, my memory was refreshed yesterday. It’s Stichelton. Ok, so either the waiter did pronounce it a little funny or I transposed syllables in my brain, but at least the mystery is solved.

Sure, it ranks pretty low on the scale of life’s great mysteries (I’d rather discover Sasquatch or D.B. Cooper—keeping it NW for you) but sometimes cheese is all I have.