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It’s naughty, nice, and if you overindulge you might have a nightmare. Cheese is basically the new booze, but now the people behind street food legend The Cheese Truck have gone and made it official by opening The Cheese Bar.
The best thing about The Cheese Bar is that it actually looks like a bar. Having spent the past three years operating out of a bright yellow ice-cream van, it’s clear that founder Mathew Carver has put real care into designing this, his first permanent spot. Underneath a burlesque club in Camden Stables Market, the intimate space is dominated by a sleek, rectangular marble counter. Sitting here feels sexier than anywhere that smells this much of brie has a right to: there’s low strip lighting, an apparently Drake-only playlist and lots of friendly and relaxed bartenders to talk you through the cheese-centric menu. That menu reads like foodie soft porn – be careful you don’t drool on it.
The Cheese Truck only served (unbelievably delicious) grilled cheese sarnies, but the Bar’s branched out to serve all manner of cheese-based delights. A case in point: the truffled baron bigod (a brie made with raw cow’s milk) was almost indecently creamy. The wonderful thing about this dish was that the truffle was present without being overpowering – each bite like cool silk on your tongue. A perfect dish to follow this with was the indulgently oily ‘young buck’ stilton raclette – a hot mess of fried potatoes, sharp blue cheese and smoky strips of meat. Best of all, though, were those grilled-cheese sandwiches. The Cheese Truck are Insta-famous for serving up oozing puddles of dairy, so I was a bit disappointed when my Keen’s cheddar and onion sarnie arrived with absolutely no overspill, but the taste more than made up for it. Piping-hot and perfectly greasy, this is a hangover cure to beat any bloody mary on earth.
The Cheese Bar isn’t completely perfect – its waldorf salad is weirdly wet, and on my visit cheese really had to be the new booze because it hadn’t got its alcohol licence yet. But it's got one now, and adding wine to the mix may just make this actual bar heaven. Go make it your local before everyone else does.