Food memoirs often promise comfort, but few deliver it as deliciously as The Cheese Cure: How Comté and Camembert Fed My Soulby Michael Finnerty. Part culinary exploration, part midlife reset, and part love letter to artisan cheese, this book reads like the literary equivalent of a perfectly assembled cheeseboard—rich, varied, and impossible to consume without smiling.
At its heart, The Cheese Cure is the story of a journalist at CBC Radio Montreal whose life had begun to feel as flat as an under-ripened wheel of cheese. After years working in high-pressure media, Finnerty takes a leap of faith and becomes an apprentice cheesemonger at Borough Market in London, England. What follows is an immersive journey into the world of cheese—its textures, traditions, eccentric personalities, and surprising emotional power.
From the first chapter, Finnerty’s writing crackles with sensory detail. You can almost smell the nutty sweetness of Comté and the earthy funk of Camembert rising from the page. The author treats cheese not just as food, but as a cultural artifact: something shaped by landscapes, farmers, weather, and centuries of tradition. For food lovers, these passages are pure indulgence. Finnerty describes tasting sessions and cheese care rituals with the reverence of a sommelier and the enthusiasm of someone discovering a new passion.
What elevates the book beyond a simple foodie diary is the structure. Each chapter ends with a spotlight on a particular cheese, offering quick histories, tasting notes, and serving suggestions. These sections feel like mini masterclasses for readers curious about the craft of cheesemongering and the incredible diversity of the cheese world. They also have a dangerous side effect: by the end of the book, you may find yourself hunting down obscure cheeses at your local shop.
That’s exactly what I did. Heading off to Oxford County for a day of cheese exploring their Cheese Tour, we encountered people who loved to talk about their cheesy passion and tasted divine morsels of dairy delights. Check it out in our Culinary Travel section. We learned that GenZ’s are not entertaining like us older people do…they like to be casual about it and prefer laying out a charcuterie board of unique food or reinventing the fondue pot. As a nod to this casual style, we thought you’d like to try Oxford’s Harvest Fondue in our Recipe section. Check out Gunn’s Hill Cheese for more recipes.
The Cheese Cure is about more than flavour. Finnerty’s apprenticeship plunges him into the physical and social realities of market life: early mornings, aching feet, complex storage rituals, and the constant challenge of serving curious customers. Cheesemongering, it turns out, is demanding work—requiring knowledge, stamina, and no small amount of courage when wielding sharp knives around giant wheels of dairy.
One of the book’s most powerful themes is community. Finnerty discovers that the cheese counter is a place where stories are shared as freely as samples. Customers linger, friendships form, and the market becomes a small ecosystem of passion and craft. When the area experiences a frightening attack, the sense of solidarity among staff and patrons highlights how food spaces can foster genuine human connection.
Stylistically, Finnerty balances humour and introspection beautifully. His self-deprecating tone keeps the memoir grounded, even when he waxes poetic about cheese rind and fermentation. The book is peppered with charming mishaps—sliced fingers, misjudged tastings, and the inevitable culture shock of moving from journalism to manual food work.
For foodies, this memoir is irresistible. It celebrates the tactile pleasures of eating and the craftsmanship behind everyday ingredients. For anyone feeling stuck in their career or routine, it offers something deeper: a reminder that joy sometimes arrives in unexpected forms—like a wedge of cheese passed across a market counter.
The Cheese Cure proves that food writing is at its best when it’s about people as much as plates. Finnerty may have set out to learn about cheese, but what he truly discovered was flavour in life itself.
Purchase the book at The Cheese Cure – University of Toronto Press or win a copy in our Giveaway section.