For the past decade and beyond, television shows about food have proliferated, showing everything from baking competitions to explorations of street food across the world. Most recently, cheese lovers everywhere are getting to see their favorite food get its due with Afrim Pristine’s Cheese: A Love Story. Food Network Canada initially released the show in Canada in 2021, and the six-episode show became available for US viewers on Hulu earlier this year.
Each episode focuses on a different country and its cheese traditions, including Switzerland, France, Greece, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. Pristine meets cheese makers, cheesemongers, chefs, and other people involved in the world of cheese in each episode. It’s a beautiful blend of tradition and innovation around cheese.
Cheese Boutique photo credit Alex Edelman
Who is Afrim Pristine?
Afrim Pristine, co-owner of Cheese Boutique in Toronto, Canada, knew his way around cheese and television but noted that his vocation could have been anything; it just happened to be cheese. His parents emigrated from Europe to Canada and needed a job. They saw a need for a cheese shop in the neighborhood. Neither had cheese backgrounds but they figured it out how to make the business work. “It was a job and it was an opportunity to do something unique and an opportunity to provide for their family, and to put food on our table,” Pristine explained. That’s how he got started in his love affair with cheese.
Now he’s spent 25 years in cheesemaking and is one of Canada’s youngest and only maître fromager, a cheese master, and author of cookbook For the Love of Cheese and a forthcoming cookbook in 2024.
In addition to running the family cheese shop Cheese Boutique, Pristine had made appearances on Top Chef Canada, Menu Match-Up, and other shows so when Food Network Canada approached him to do his own show, Pristine said, “they didn’t have to ask me twice.” He credited the network for being very good to him and giving him a lot of creative freedom to choose where to go and what people to see.
British Columbia with Allison Spurrell & Bob Feenie
Canada Gets a Closer Look
While he had plans to go to Italy and the US for episodes, thanks to COVID-19, the show had to make some changes on the fly and he ended up including more provinces in Canada. “As a proud Canadian, I’ve really got into the idea of showcasing what we do here, from east coast to west,” Pristine said, “I visited three of the biggest cheese producing provinces in Canada and I am so happy I did.”
People were a bit confused about the choice of British Columbia since it is not well known for its cheese like Quebec and Ontario but they trusted Pristine’s vision. While he has no favorite episodes, his favorite to film was British Columbia because it was so beautiful. One particular moment he mentioned was going out fishing for sea urchin and other seafood with Chef Paul Moran to make incredible cheese/seafood dishes.
With regard to the British Columbia’s cheese scene, the episode was “Not only for [US] Americans, but even for Canadian people, like people in Ontario, Quebec, [they] didn’t know they were making stuff like that in British Columbia.” He compared the distance between Toronto and Vancouver in Canada to New York City to Los Angeles in the US.
Discovering the World Through Cheese
Switzerland photo credit Geoff Lackner & Food Network CA
Pristine wanted to make sure he did an episode on Greece because people only think of Feta cheese, a crumbly goat cheese. “That was exactly the whole point of going to Greece. It’s a small country, but has a huge and very long, deep cheese culture,” he explained. One of his favorite moments was meeting a sheepherder in Crete who had never been in front of a camera before and learning about the man’s perspective about cheese and his chosen vocation. Pristine called it “incredibly humbling.”
Pristine said he owes the success of the show to the cheesemakers that he visited. “They deserve the attention. This gave me the opportunity to do that and put those cheesemakers and those chefs who have taught me so much over the years on a pedestal,” he said. He wanted to show the beautiful diversity of how cheese is made and consumed in countries throughout the world. While he had tried about 3,000 cheeses prior to the show, he was constantly learning about new cheeses and traditions, adding 75 more cheeses to his repertoire. Even in his hometown of Toronto, he visited restaurants and met chefs he had never known before.
A New Discovery
One surprising thing that came out of the show was his argument for cheese and seafood. “It works,” Pristine said, citing the example of smoked salmon and cream cheese. “The sea urchin was brilliant with the buffalo mozzarella,” he explained, arguing against blanket statements that seafood and cheese do not work together. Not all wines work with cheese; similarly not all fish pair with cheese but others definitely do.
Reaction to the Show
People have been extremely receptive to the show. He’s had people drive 100s of miles to come to his cheese shop and he has seen his Instagram feed quadruple overnight. The shop’s Instagram account has an even larger following. But Pristine says he wants to “keep working and pushing hard and getting better at what I do” and his increased visibility due to the show has impacted his business and personal brand.
At the end of the day, Pristine said that he owes everything to cheese. “It gave me everything. I don’t have a book; I don’t have a show. I don’t have a life. I don’t have food on my table without cheese,” he explained, “Everything I do is almost a big thank you [to cheese] for that reason.”