meatetarian eats >> good cheese comes in small packages

the old world grilled cheese sandwich, with prosciutto and apple & onion jam added

Attention, Bulldogs — Athens. Has. A. Cheese. Market. This is NOT a drill!

Fritz Gibson, a Tifton, Georgia, native who grew up with Extension agent parents, spent years in Vermont and Chicago exploring the culinary world, and he kept ending up working with cheeses. When he and his wife, who works in wine, moved back to the Classic City, they’d already created the idea for Half-Shepherd. The timing was kismet: he said about three months after they moved back and discovered this space off Prince Avenue in the Normaltown neighborhood, the space came up for grabs and they nabbed it.

Several years ago, when I lived in the Virginia Highland neighborhood of Atlanta, I lived within walking distance of this incredible neighborhood market that had sandwiches, a bakery, dry goods, wine and a cheese display to swoon over, which was (wo)manned by a real-life cheesemonger. 

To my knowledge, at least during college and in the year since I returned, Athens didn’t have anything of the sort. Most of the larger grocery stores amped up their “fancy” cheese selection during the past few years, but I mean … it’s a grocery store. You go in, you play bumper-buggy with about 6,431 fellow shoppers all vying for the same half-pint of heavy cream. The store might be clean, but when you’re on a time crunch to get back home and cook a meal/take the dog to doggie daycare, it’s hard to achieve cookery zen when you’ve been waiting in the self-checkout line for 17 minutes.

This is why I love local markets, especially local markets that market other local stuff. Half-Shepherd takes things up a notch though: “Local foodies, I see your farmer’s market vibe and I raise you sandwich café.”

“I was picking [my friend’s] brain about opening a shop, and he said, ‘What is the most important thing for a cheese shop to do to stay in business?’ And I said, ‘Sell sandwiches,’” Gibson told me. “I want people to come in every day and buy a little bit of cheese to eat that day, but the fact is nobody’s going to come in every day and buy cheese.”

So, think of Half-Shepherd as half-café, half-artisan food shop. There’s even wine and beer, although sadly Georgia laws prevent us from drinking in the store without it having a separate license. Laws are weird.

It was in this sandwich café that I ate one of the richest grilled cheeses to ever grace my palate. The Old World Grilled Cheese, along with its fraternal twin the Old School Grilled Cheese, come with a slate of three cheeses each, and then your choice of 24 additions that can be pressed in. ​

half-shepherd's sandwich menu

Yes, y’all, I counted: 24 mustards, additional cheeses, meats and spreads to pick from. I added the prosciutto and apple & onion jam, though in hindsight I’ll request Dijon mustard as well next time. The Old World has comte, an Alpine cheese I’d never heard of; gouda and brie, which is one of my not-so-guilty cheese pleasures; all on sourdough bread from Atlanta’s H&F Bread Co.

cheese + charcuterie plate

to-go cheese plates and sandwiches for lunchers in a hurry. the sandwiches are also available on select days at The Old Pal.

When my sandwich arrived, I’ll admit, I was a little disappointed by the size of the sandwich — I expected it to come out the size of my face. It was not. However! What this sandwich lacked in size, it made up for in flavor and richness. Guys, half this sandwich came home with me. And this is coming from the girl who can put away some sandwiches. 

​If I were a professional at this and had an assistant who was handy with a camera, I would’ve had her lean over my shoulder and film the cheese pull. I heard a long time ago on Food Network that mozzarella was quality-graded on how long you could get it to pull before it snapped. I’m not sure if that’s the same case for the comte and brie on the Old World Grilled Cheese, but the cheese pull was
​W O N D E R F U L. I cut my sandwich in half purely for photographic purposes and relished in pulling it apart!

“If you ever tried to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an aged cheese, it kind of breaks apart when you heat it up and it gets oily,” Gibson said. “The trick is to mix in some less-aged cheeses with more moisture in them. With both [the Old World and Old School] sandwiches, we try to do one fairly aged cheese, one moderately aged cheese and one fresher cheese.”

For the Old World, the brie is the fresher, the comte a moderately aged melting cheese and the 30-month gouda the more aged.
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My taste buds aren’t refined enough (… yet) to distinguish the difference between all three cheeses, but I can tell you that the blend of the three was a delicate blend of creamy, mild and nuttiness. Prosciutto is a paper-thin sliced Italian dry-cured ham. It is divine. Since it’s cured, it has a pronounced salty flavor, which to me just enhanced how mild the cheeses are. 

Sometimes when I have a grilled cheese with bacon and the cheeses are sharper, there’s just too much savory going on and nothing to balance it. Plus that apple and onion jam … man! It was not overpowering, and also not overly sugary. Just a gentle sweetness. I had to kind of search for it at first, but once I could identify the flavor alone I tasted it more in future bites.
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“Alpine cheeses like comte have a nice nuttiness to them. The brie is kind of just the binder in a lot of ways,” Gibson said. “Goudas tend to be sweet cheeses.”

​That’s because when gouda is made, the curd is washed to remove excess lactose. Lactose, or milk sugar, converts into lactic acid, which contributes to a sharp or tangy flavor. No lactose means no lactic acid, which means no tanginess, which means exactly the kind of cheese I prefer.

ordering cheeses from the counter

I visited Half-Shepherd for its ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, and as part of that was able to enjoy kind of a two-fer. The owners put out samples of their Cubanesque sandwich as well, and that will definitely be what I get full-size next time. The roasted pork fell apart in my mouth, and the chow-chow gave a nice crunch and vinegar-y tang. Gibson said he puts the comte cheese — that moderately aged, nutty Alpine cheese on my sandwich — on this one as well. We uncultured (ooh, cheese pun!) Americans have a tendency to think of Swiss cheese as ivory slices with holes in them, but there is a much broader category of Alpine cheeses like comte that Half-Shepherd can now introduce us to.

Even though Gibson said most people will come in for a sandwich during lunch, I have a feeling I’ll be half-and-half. It’s a little hard for me to visit a cheese shop, nerd out about cheese flavors and pairings and not come home with cheese, and probably meat; there’s that too in the case; to then call my mother, Nanny and Aunt Robbie to spread the good news.
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sandwiches out for the ribbon cutting. the cubanesque is back right.

What?! Don’t look at me like that.

Y'all already know my family’s coming to visit next just to take home artisan cheese, don't even play! Seeing their daughter/granddaughter/ niece is just a front to get good food.

​just kidding, mom.

bonus photo >> next time i go in, i'm also taking home this sweet knitting tote.