Venissimo Cheese

I never quite  got around to sharing my new year resolutions with you but while pretty much everyone was making the same resolution of losing weight, I was making more creative resolutions. One of my resolutions was to get back into photography. Little known fact, I've been into photography and collecting digital, film, and instant cameras since high school. I would literally take my DSLR and look for inspiration everywhere, but for some reason I just stopped recently. This year I plan to take you around places here in San Diego, Tijuana, Orange County, and Los Angeles as part of the weekly lifestyle post. We're starting off the weekly lifestyle posts with a magical trip to a cheese shop in San Diego called Venissimo Cheese.

Let's start off with a little story of what brought my boyfriend and I to Venissimo Cheese. I've loved cheese since I was a child. I remember begging my dad to buy string cheese for me when we would cross the border for my school lunches and I would always beg my mom for a piece of Oaxaca cheese when she would make quesadillas for my brother and I. Once I got to study abroad in Paris my love for cheese became an obsession. I swear I would eat cheese once a day, every single day I spent in Paris. Living with my childhood Mexican friend, we rarely made any cheese discoveries but luckily my boyfriend was living with a French couple so whenever he would try a new cheese he would let us know about it. I also got the chance to try a few French cheeses that I had never heard about when I would go eat at my boyfriend's apartment.

I had some of the stinkiest, odd colored, and even moldy cheese (Roquefort anyone?) and they were incredibly delicious. Since coming back to San Diego I've had nothing but horrible cheese. I've tried plenty of "French" cheeses only to be disappointed at how bland they are. There was one instance where my boyfriend I bought brie from a supermarket and it was so disgusting that we had to return it to get our money back. I had just given up on my quest to finding good French cheese and just settled with gouda and cheddar, since those are the only two cheeses that Americans do well in my opinion.

Last Wednesday when my boyfriend and I were exploring the new Headquarters at Seaport District we came across Venissimo Cheese. Once we walked in we immediately knew that we were in cheese heaven. There were so many cheese from different countries such as Italy, Spain, Canada, and of course France. We even saw some familiar French brands and cheeses which just brought back so many memories of browsing the Carrefour or Auchan cheese section. Since we were overwhelmed with all the cheeses, we asked to sample le chevrot and the fromager d'affinois. One bite of the sample and I swear I wanted to turn into the girl who cried over an In-N-Out burger. I get you girl! Words cannot describe when you first taste something you haven't had in years.

We decided to go for a quarter pound of fromager d'affinois and then get three cheese samples (which were 3 for $3), a cone of salami and cured meat ($5), and a baguette from Bread and Cie in Hillcrest. All in all lunch for two costed us $13 which is an incredible deal! Both my boyfriend and I were so in love with our experience at Venissimo Cheese that we're certainly going to be coming here often when he comes visit me. Venissimo Cheese has three locations in San Diego: one in Mission Hills, Del Mar, and the newest one at the Headquarters in Downtown. If you're a cheese lover or an expat desperately looking for good cheese, then consider this your new favorite place to shop.

If you're curious to see how excited we were about the cheese you can watch the vlog.

I hope you all enjoyed the first lifestyle post of the year. Let me know in the comments below what your favorite cheese is.