January 7, 2003

Cheese it

THE CASTRO CHEESERY isn't a restaurant. It isn't even a coffeehouse, in the "sit down and have a cup o' coffee" sense, although they bill themselves as the "#1 coffeehouse in the Bay Area."

–The idea to review the Cheesery came to me while learning to play a trucker song called "The Sentimental Trucker Song" by Bob Sprankle. One of my favorite songwriters ...

"Behind every lonely mile there lies another / Behind every trucker is a father and a mother / Beneath the blue highway is a land that remains wild / Behind every rolling ball there comes a running child."

That's the chorus. The first lines of the first verse go, "We get lonely / We get scared / We get hungry so we get coffees to go."

Great song. You should hear it on my great new steel drum. Which drum, by the way, is why I can't afford to eat anymore. So, like truckers, I've been eating cups of coffee.

Most of the kidding aside, for lunch yesterday I went down to Costco and filled up on free samples. The chicken tortellini soup was pretty bad. The pot stickers were pretty good. The pepperoni pizza-flavored bagel slices were nutritious, if nothing else. I went around and around and around, filling up my buggy and then leaving it there, loaded, and driving to the Castro for cheese and coffee at the Cheesery.

It's tiny, crammed into all the commotion near the Castro Theatre, same side of the street. I've been getting my coffee beans there off and on almost ever since I moved here 13 years ago. It's better and cheaper than what you generally get in grocery stores. Pound of French roast goes for $4.75, but it used to be even a buck or two cheaper than that, I think. And this is gourmet shit. Some friends of mine who moved to Pittsburgh get it mail-ordered to them, they like it so much.

I always wish you could sit down and stay awhile in there, it's so colorful and friendly, and it smells so good and rich and roasty you just sort of wake up a notch, by osmosis. Last night, more than ever, I wanted to hang out. I had about an hour to kill before I was supposed to be at Binko's for a music jam, just a few blocks away. The 49ers game had just started, and they had it on the TV, up in the corner.

I fixed myself a cup of coffee and asked to sample the Asiago. I'd seen people do this in cheese shops: taste a little bit of this, little bit of that, and a little bit of the other thing. So long as you buy something, eventually, it's cool. And I was going to buy a cup of coffee.

"Hard or mild?" the woman behind the counter said.

"Hard," I said, and while she was getting it, I watched the game. The Niners were up 3-0, and driving.

"Be careful," she said, pointing a big knife at me.

I peeled off a thin slice of cheese and ate it, trying to look pensive, discriminating, at least slightly disappointed. It was good, though. "Wow," I said, leaving it at that. "How about provolone? Do you have any sharp provolone?"

They didn't, but, what the hell, I guessed I'd try the regular, and while she was getting it I got to see the 49ers score again. Extra point: good. 10-0.

Sharp provolone's my favorite cheese. Mild's fine, but nothing special, of course, so after tasting it I shrugged and asked to try the Romano.

A commercial was on, but the Romano was good and gritty and salty – a noteworthy note to finish a cheese course with, so I nodded and shook my head and scratched my head and said, "Hmm." On TV: commercials still. "Just the coffee," I said.

I sipped the coffee on the sidewalk, keeping an eye on the game through the window, standing next to a guy sitting on the sidewalk, offering to tell everybody's fortune for a dollar.

"Hey, do you do football games?" I asked the fortune-teller. Not that it mattered. It was a meaningless game, and too late to place a bet.

"I'm not into sports, man," the fortune-teller said.

I wondered what kind of a fortune-teller could not be into sports, and I decided: not much of one. Then I noticed a sign on the window that advertised Spanish manchego for $6.99 a pound.

Manchego is Crawdad's favorite kind of cheese. I thought I'd go taste her some for a New Year's present. It was great. The counter woman was still all smiles. Maybe she recognized me as a regular coffee customer. To be safe, I bought a huge muffin ($1.50) and gave half of it to the fortune-teller.

"Cool, dude," he said as I was walking away. "Have a great night."

I don't think he meant it as a prediction, but when I got to Binko's there was a 10-gallon pot of chicken soup on the stove. I had seven bowls.

Castro Cheesery. 427 Castro (at Market), S.F. (888) 528-2349. Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Takeout only. Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.