Southern cheese rolls en route to northern cheese eaters at the Whitestone Cheese bar in Auckland's Wynyard Quarter. Photo/Michael Craig
Hello, is it brie you're looking for? Kim Knight reviews the new northern outpost of a southern cheese legend.
Love a cheesy pick-up line? Let me tell you about a bar where it's okay to talk curd-y.
Wynyard Quarter gets weirdly hot in summer. There's a lot of concrete and white paint; a constant squinty, portside glare. Pull up a seat in the relative shade of a relative newcomer - the northern outpost of a southern dairy rockstar. At the Whitestone Cheese Bar, life is gouda. Nothing gets feta than this. I'll stop now, because the food has arrived.
Wine and cheese go together like bacon and eggs, but we're here for an early lunch, on the day after an extremely long lunch. Two strong coffees (excellent) and a Mac's Rhubarb and Lemonade for me. I should have known better - nobody seems able to bottle the tart antiquity of these fruity stalks. This version was too sweet and the label was louder than the flavour. More like a post-mix raspberry than rhubarb, it tasted like being a 9-year-old in the carpark of a country pub. Can I have another packet of green onion chips?
In fact, they get the potato chips exactly right here. Whitestone's small and delicious menu focuses (as you'd expect) on cheese, but the toasted sandwiches come with a handful of Proper Crisps, another outrageously good South Island food success story.
Whitestone Cheese was born in Ōamaru. Founded in 1987 by Bob and Sue Berry, the family-run business became internationally famous for its Windsor Vintage Blue. These days, the production lines run to almost 30 different varieties of cheese - including the one that was the bedrock of my late afternoon lockdown snacks, a cow and goat milk mix called Vintage Five Forks.
I'm a regular user of the company's mail-order service (keep an eye out for the catering sized specials - halloumi freezes very successfully) but nothing beats an in-person tasting with a side of sterling service. At the Wynyard Quarter site, you can sample and purchase cheese to take home, but it might be far more pleasant to people-watch over a glass of wine and a platter (three cheeses - around 150g total - will set you back $16).
My arteries have to last an entire reviewing year so I regretfully passed on the truffle honey-baked camembert with baguette, pickles and candied walnuts ($12). Is bread with baked cheese Auckland's entree du jour? I feel like I'm seeing it everywhere. Think of this dish as the restaurant interpretation of the cheese on toast you demolished at your kitchen table desk - minus the children judging you for the lunchtime chardonnay.
Whitestone does actually offer grilled cheese toasties, including one on "classic white bread" which, to be honest, did feel a bit too close to work-from-home. Bring on the truffle roasted mushrooms, McClure's pickles, salad greens and grilled brie with aforementioned crisps ($14.50) and a lovely little cumin-heavy bowl of housemade tomato sauce.
It was a beast of a sandwich. Really juicy mushrooms bumped up against the earthy white mould of the oozey, melty brie. Pickles cut through everything and there was a genius extra crackle of cheese - a handful of something sharp and tasty had been thrown over the top slice of sourdough and grilled until it was almost as crispy as the run-off that is the ruin of cheap chain store toasted sandwich makers everywhere. Cheese on cheese? Yes please.
James' $14.50 sandwich came packed with bbq smoke-imbued pulled pork, sauerkraut and two quite grown-up cheeses: Totara Tasty and Monte Christo. One is a sharp cheddar, the other a slightly sticky, nutty sheep's milk cheese. They never going to achieve the classic stretchy melt you get from a block of supermarket Colby, but I do think it all needed slightly longer in the grill to really heat the filling through. Super-flavoursome, but where my sandwich was softly alluring, his was a less subtle punch in the tastebuds.
We ordered the southern cheese rolls ($7 for two) just for the photograph. They photographed almost as beautifully as they ate.
"Southland Sushi" is the dish that celebrated British cook Nigella Lawson requested when she last visited Invercargill. Whitestone's Oamaru home base might be a few hours north of true cheese roll country, but I think they've done the Mainland proud with this version.
Cheese roll recipes are hotly debated. Reduced cream or evaporated milk? Onion soup mix or actual onion? Tasty or Mild? These ones were gooey and buttery with a slight piquancy to the definitely cheesy filling. A simple classic that was not trying too hard to be something it was not; all life lessons should be this cheesy.
Whitestone Cheese Bar, 1/17 Jellicoe St, Wynyard Quarter, Auckland, ph 027 287 1536. We spent: $52 for two.
Drinks list
by Yvonne Lorkin
That there's even a thing called a "cheese bar" has me all a-fluster. If my office was in Whitestone's vicinity, I'd be down there faster than you can say "halloumi chips" every day at knock-off time. I swear, there's no point looking at me for a bone marrow donation because I have feta in my femurs, tasty cheddar in both tibia, havarti in my humerus, ricotta running through my ribs and my sternum's stacked with stilton.
The other thing I'm ferociously fond of is wine and its appearance on a compact and easily digestible list. And that's exactly what the Whitestone Cheese Bar offers.
Sourced mainly from one distributor, the brands are all well-known and reliable, but give me a $14 flute of Daniel Le Brun fizz, a glass of the deliciously complex Wither Hills SV Rarangi Sauvignon Blanc or a goblet of the gorgeous Mt Difficulty Chenin Blanc (amazing with brie and aged cheddar) and I'm a happy chicken. Trusted, budget favourites like Roaring Meg and Leefield Station sit alongside a higher-end examples from Waitaki Valley Q, Te Whare Ra and Trinity Hill.
But save yourself some space for a sip or six of tawny port for those last little nibbles, it's the best whey to end the experience.