Bengaluru sees a rising number of artisanal cheesemakers

The increase in the number of artisanal cheesemakers in Bengaluru suggests there’s a quietly brewing culinary trend in the offing.

Over 15 years ago, Vallombrosa Cheese was set up by father K L Michael in a seminary in K R Puram. It was possibly the first homemade cheese shop in the city, which supplies fresh burrata, ricotta and mascarpone to restaurants and hotels to this day. 

In 2018, Shruti Golchha and chef Manu Chandra launched Begum Victoria. They looked beyond just Italian cheeses and brought to the city options like manchego from Spain and halloumi from Cyprus, in addition to French and Swiss classics like brie and gruyere. 

In the past few years, however, a number of small-batch, limited edition and experimental cheeses have cropped up.

French connection

Nari and Kage (fox and crow in Kannada), a small store in Koramangala, stocks options like queso oaxaca, a Mexican-style mozzarella, and fresh chevre, a French cheese made with goat’s milk. Started by Kathrina Salam from Manipur and Benjamin Armel, a French national, it was initially a home experiment that took off after the results were better than they expected. “During the Covid lockdowns, we started making our own bread. The need for good cheese followed. But it was difficult to find in the city. So we started making cheese,” says Benjamin. 

They started with feta and then moved on to gruyere, edam and camembert. Then, they began selling online and eventually opened a shop in a residential area. While there are many cheesemakers in India, Benjamin says that the fromagerie style, where nothing is prepackaged, was missing. When they did their research before launching their store they found that there were five to six fromageries in the country. Now, there are about eight to 10, he says. 

Shruti of Begum Victoria puts it down to the pandemic. “There was a rise in people creating fine-dining experiences at home, thus making the cheese board a regular feature. Indians have slowly and steadily shifted towards home-grown, artisanal style cheese,” she explains. 

Lockdown experiments

An exchange student from France, Valentin Melchior, also started making cheese during the pandemic. He missed the cheese he’d consume on a daily basis back home in France. He runs Melchior Cheese along with his partner Aparajeeta Dhuria. Some of their popular cheeses include GOAT or Greatest of All Time, which is made with goat milk, and The Bousin, a ball of cream cheese infused with herbs, garlic, pepper, sumac and za’atar. 

Vegans included

Even vegans have not been left behind. Lucky Vegan Deli, by Darshan Manghnani, has options like za’atar chevre, classic chevre and scallion tofu cream cheese. Darshan makes his cheese from cashews and tofu. Having turned vegetarian due to health issues, he eventually made the switch to veganism seven years ago. After leaving his job at a fashion consultancy, he decided to experiment with vegan cheese. 

An underlying feature is that all these cheesemakers pride themselves on preservative-free and natural ingredients. “With high disposable income, people are eager to experiment with different kinds of cheese, locally. Consumers, especially millennials are encouraging a shift from mass-produced products to artisanal and crafted options,” Shruti sums up.

The cheeses are available on major online retail platforms and prices range from Rs 200 to Rs 750.