How to cut French cheese

You certainly know that France is very famous for, and proud of, its cheeses. Charles De Gaulle once said that it is very difficult to govern a country which produces more than 246 different cheeses. In the meantime there are even more, France counts approximately 400 cheese varieties and according to statistics, every French person eats more or less 50 pounds of cheese per year. What most foreigners do not know though is how to properly cut the cheese when sharing a cheese platter during a meal. You will probably be tempted to cut a round Camembert in transversal slices and therefore offend against the French etiquette. Camembert is cut like a cake, in order to get with every slice a bit of the inner tender heart and a bit of the slightly drier outer part of the cheese.

The same rule applies for a piece of Roquefort cheese, never cut off the front part, but always cut lengthwise. Oh yes, in France even eating cheese is part of the “art de vivre”.