Mark Todd (thecheesedude at aol dot com) is a cheese expert who lives near the Russian River. Today he was in a local store demoing a cheese (Chiantino) that he and his business partner import from Germany. We had a long and utterly fascinating conversation. He has met most of the chefs who appear on the Food Network. His favs:
The best cook: Jacques Pepin “hands down”.
The most knowledgeable food expert: Alton Brown. “He knows ten times more than all the rest of them put together.”
How did he become a cheese expert, I asked. “Persistence,” he said.
The details of that persistence were not what I expected. When he was 30, his dad, who was 58, died of a massive heart attack. At the time, he was a lawyer. He hated it. What do I really want to do? he wondered. Something with food. He and his wife moved from crowded Palo Alto to near the Russian River. At a food event in the months that followed, he met someone who was paid to carve cheese. Wow, you can get paid for that, he thought. He asked the guy if he needed help. No, he didn’t. He and his wife hung out with the guy and his girlfriend. Several months later, the guy told him he needed help at an upcoming event in Monterey. He went down and helped and was paid $500/day in addition to free hotel for him and his wife and conference admission (usually $750). After the conference, he contacted the guy’s boss. “I want to do this,” he said. “What do you know about cheese?” he was asked. “Nothing,” he said. “Well, then you’re no use to us,” he was told. Two weeks later he called the boss again. “I’ve read four books about cheese,” he said. “Do you have any work for me?” No, he was told. “I really want to do this,” he said. He called the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. Finally the boss said, “I get it. You really want to do this.” And he was hired for six figures a year to go here and there and talk about cheese. Now he works for many cheese organizations. Next week he’s going to China to teach them about California cheeses.
I told him I was interested in how people come to appreciate “fine” food. Exposure, he said. “Are some exposures more powerful than others?” I asked. “Peer exposure,” he said. When he was a sophomore in college (at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo), he didn’t like beer. He decided he wanted to learn about wine. One of his roommates had been to Napa and come back with notes. Teach me about wine, he said to his roommate. It takes time, his roommate said. They decided that Wednesday would be Wine Night. Every Wednesday for the next two years, he, his roommate, and another guy went to Safeway and bought three versions of the same varietal — e.g., three Chardonnays. Then they did blind tastings. His palate became better than most of the guys in the wine business, he said. Side-by-side tastings are crucial, he said. If you taste 500 cheeses on 500 different days, you won’t know much. But if you taste those cheeses side by side, you’ll learn a lot.
As wallpaper patterns, store displays, and millions of graphic designs reveal, we like to see similar things side by side. I have blogged here, here, and here about side-by-side comparisons and human evolution.
Looking for Mark Todds email. Would like him to sample a new cheese made locally in Valley Ford, California.
His email address is given above.