Cheese Shops We Love: Beautiful Rind

Editor’s note: We are pleased to welcome contributor Elisa Shoenberger and to feature Randall Felts who is not only the owner of Beautiful Rind but was also one of our inaugural judges of the NY International Cheese Competition.

Location

2211 N Milwaukee Ave

Chicago, IL 60647

 

Good Cheese by Good People

Randall Felts got his start at a fine dining California Cuisine restaurant in the South with a farm-to-table mentality. For him, he loved the cheese board part of his job and worked in the kitchen for two years. He loved the storytelling aspect of cheese, seeing it as a perfect storm of a liberal arts education: “cheese is as much a product of chemistry and biology, but there’s also so much history and culture intertwined with it.” He decided to take the plunge into cheese retailing working at Whole Foods and later moved to Chicago and worked at Pastoral. However, he was surprised that there wasn’t a bigger cheese scene, especially given Chicago’s proximity to dairies in Wisconsin and Iowa.

Felts eventually decided to open up his own cheese shop to help educate people about the wonderful world of cheese as well as to try to make cheese mongering a more sustainable profession by paying a higher living wage. Their food inspection was the day before the Illinois Governor ordered the shelter-in-place due to the coronavirus. After soul searching and talking with cheese producers and others in the industry, he decided to open Beautiful Rind in April 2020. Dining in-store wasn’t possible but delivery and retail cheese were.

The philosophy of the shop is “Good cheese by good people.” They want to highlight producers that are doing good work, such as Nettle Meadow Farm that also functions as an animal sanctuary. Or cheese producers that treat their employees and animals well. But of course, the cheese has to taste good.

In addition to making cheese boards and sandwiches, Beautiful Rind has a weekly or bimonthly cheese club and holds both virtual and in-person cheese classes. For Felts, education is a key component of Beautiful Rind since people can be intimidated by cheese, thinking there are lots of rules. The cheese club in particular relishes in silly jokes because people “are not going to be as intimidated when the person that’s selling you the fancy food is making jokes,” Felts said.

 

The Shop

The store is a rectangle with white colored walls and a giant L shaped counter with wooden accents. The long part of the L is made up of the giant cheese case with three shelves of cheeses. Next to the cheese case  is a counter with high top chairs for bar seating. The other part of the counter, the short part of the L, is where staff prepare food, like sandwiches. Near the cheese case is a wall with arched shelves that contain an assortment of wines as well as two refrigerators filled with cheese, beer, and other perishables. The bulk of the space is filled with wooden tables for dine-in.

During Covid, they did take-out and limited delivery and even curbside. Even now, all staff wear masks. Now they are fully open to in-store and sidewalk dining along with in-person cheese classes.

 

Top-selling Cheeses

 

Prairie Breeze Cheddar

This cheddar is Iowa-based Milton Creamery’s best-selling cheese. It’s a Mennonite cooperative so it’s supporting a vanishing way of life, Felts said, as well as supporting small-scale farming in the state. It’s on the bigger side of the cheese producers that Beautiful Rind normally has but the story is great. The cheddar has those crunchy crystals, Tyrosine crystals, with a sweet and sour sort of flavor. Felts recommends, “meil de piloncillo to bring out the citrus notes in the chili and woodsy notes in the cinnamon.”

 

 Brillat Savarin

Not many cheeses are named for writers but Brillat-Savarin is named for French writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin who is known for the quotation: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” It’s a triple creme brie that’s gooey. While Prairie Breeze hits that comfort button, Felts said, Brillat-Savarin hits that luxurious button. It accounts for one third of their cheese plates. It’s great spread on bread, or eaten with figs or fig jam, or just by itself.

 

Blakesville Chevre

This Wisconsin-based chevre comes from Blakesville Dairy Farm using sustainable farming practices. This cheese is the classic soft goat cheese without the gamey taste of goat that some folks may associate with fresh cheese, Felts said. It’s a cheese that melts in your mouth plus its great cheese with great animal husbandry. Felts recommends putting it uncooked on “salads, toast/bruschetta, or crumbled over grilled/poached stone fruits/peaches” because of its great texture.

 

Also Look For

They have a nice wall of affordable wines, including a nice selection of sparkling wines. Special mention is their dessert wine Sauternes from the Bordeaux region of France. Also, they’ve got a nice array of crackers and sweets to accompany the cheese. Also, their freshly made fried cheese curds are top-notch.