Alex Farm Products

Avoid. My 8 yearold twins are getting into brie. I thought it would be nice for them to try a few different brands other than the pre-​packaged stuff at loeblaws. There was nonone behind the us in line and i came ready to spend some money and my kids were being super polite I asked the guy behind the counter to recommend a soft brie. He insisted on some odd looking prepackaged spread product. It was American spread… It wasn’t brie and didn’t really look very interesting. I asked him again if we could sample some brie and he started ringing up the nasty prepackaged stuff. At that point, another person came in the store and he started asking her what she wanted… she was like ‘why don’t you finish helping them??’.He told us he recommended the same processed-​cheese-​looking-​non-​brie paste and he doesn’t do samples. I told the guy to forget it and left. We ended up blowing 30 $ at ‘The Pantry Fine Cheese’ nearby where the guy spent time making the kids first cheese sampling a memorable deal.

I purchased salami and cheese on Saturday February 21^st from Alex Farm Products. I made a sandwich using the salami and cheese on Sunday February 22^nd, and half way through eating it I noticed the salami had what looked like green mold on it. On Monday February 23^rd, I had recurrent vomiting with a fever and chills! FOOD POISONING! I called Alex Farm Products to complain, but have not heard back from them. I already made a complaint to the Toronto Health Department about the incident. I will be going in tomorrow to return my DISGUSTING salami, but will never get anything from here again!

I’ve been visiting this location in The Beach for several years now and can honestly say that this is the best place to find amazing cheese (and some other small delicacies). The owner of the place is extremely knowledgeable and he makes sure that all the staff he hires are well-​trained and knowledgeable too. This place has an outstanding selection of cheese from all over the place and you’re sure to find something that will blow your mind! It’s not cheap, but since when has good quality been cheap? Highly recommended!

They have a lot of cheese and it’s close to my place but the man behind the counter was very pushy. I gave up trying to express myself paid and left. He would not stop trying to upsell and kept pretending he thought I wanted more than I asked for. He may have made a few extra dollars on my first visit but I will never be back. I do not enjoy having to enter into confrontation to buy some delicious cheeses. Besides, there is a GREAT cheese shop very close by on Kingston road that I had gone to the week prior and I’ll be taking all my business there from now on. Go there instead!

Great selection, but every time I went there and asked for $ 5 of cheese the guy would cut off $ 12 and ask me if that was OK. One time he suggested another cheese other than my favourite and said it was the same taste. I got it home and it was bad, like ammonia. I never went back.

I have a good friend who spends $ 50 a week on cheese at the Danforth location of Alex Farm and after a visit of my own to the Beaches location, I can see how. Shit’s expensive, yo.
I picked up a huge rind of Muenster ($ 7), light Havarti ($ 7) and some gold label Appenzeller ($ 9). If you want to win my heart via cheese, that last one’s my absolute weakness. It is SO GOOD. Luckily it’s hard as hell to cut with a knife, ensuring that I don’t gorge myself on it.
I didn’t appreciate the commentary from the guy working — among the comments were that it was «a waste» to get Havarti AND Muenster (hey, I’ll be the judge of that, mmkay?) and that I didn’t need to go for Havarti Light (based on my appearance I’m assuming). Commentary not appreciated. Also, they don’t give out samples the way Global, Cheese Magic and Leslieville Cheese Market do. No need to be snobbish and elitist, Alex Farm. To me sampling cheese is part of the discovery and adventure.
Convenient due to location, but price and lack of friendliness will send me back to Leslieville Cheese & Cheese Magic for future cheese emergencies.

Which great Italian food store is said to smell «like God’s feet»? I always think of that line when I walk into Alex’s. The selection of cheeses and fine foods is wonderful; I like to give my friends cheese selections for gifts, but it’s hard to know when to stop! The problem is mostly financial; if you want 10-​yr old goat cheese from a tiny farm in Provence, you’ve got to expect to pay for it. Staff are helpful and make good recommendations.
If I had to pick favourites, there’s a sheep cheese called ossu iraty that ‘s amazing, and I have a great partiality for the 5 ½ yr old cheddar. Tangy without being edgy or crunchy.

i keep joking that its a disease when i go into a cheese shop, the disease being that its just not possible for me to go in empty handed and come out the same way. sometimes i think its my personality and i should get that looked at. sometimes i think its the cheese store itself and i should avoid just that one. in fact maybe ill go to other cheese shops and be disgusted, like itll turn me off cheese forever and my body will be the better for it. and then i keep finding ones that are awesome. because theyre all awesome. and if not its because one is more awesome than the next.
so how much better can a world be than to have cheese shops that all garner 5 stars? thats a world id like to live in. thats the world i am living in. in fact, were god forbid i not be allowed for some strange reason to ever have an orgasm again with my, um, mozarella stick? then well, the next best (and not too distant in pleasure) option would be with my tongue touching cheese.
so this is a review for alex farm so i should shape up here. upon entering you are confronted with an open refrigerator of SNAUSAGES!!! perfectly named SHORTYS MEAT CO. now that i look at the picture i took i feel like an idiot. there are more varieties than any porker or bovine could live in fear of. hot szechuan, chorizo, venison sausage with pork, turkey, bratwurst, mild macedonean, baresse, lamb, sun-​dried basil chicken are just the ones i could make out from the picture. what a dummy. i could go on and say what a dummy i was to have decided to put back that lobster pâté i picked up as my first disease riddled item of pleasure.
i can also say that i very much enjoyed the taste testing i did on the 4 different types of olive oil that sat in bowls in front of bread atop a table in front of a woman who was blabbing about stuff (sorry friend, but your words will always pale in comparison to the sensual pleasures of the palate. plus she was obviously overselling.).
they also have some of my other favorite things like ‘raincoast crisps’. these are crackers that must have been cut from a loaf at one time and are filled with great stuff like figs and olives; they are chewy and crunchy at the same time, perfect for soft and hard cheeses alike.). in addition to the SNAUSAGES above, it was difficult to resist the homemade pies they had — im sure theyre as awesome as they look but i didnt dare look any closer for fear of further infection.
so i proceeded to casually say to my wife that «we should probably get some cheese if here already», as though we were shopping for toilet paper and just about to run out. thats how sick i am. i am now fully understanding what it means to be pathological. i have convinced myself that this is a necessity, that this is regular life. im a serial cheeseball.
well, in trying to reform (for what reason i do not know) i put back the lobster pâté, and instead bought a 4 yr old gouda and another cheese called La Delice De Bourgogne, which is similar in texture to another homegrown cheese from quebec called St. Andre, which according to the hotshot cheesemonger who helped us, is a commercial cheese and he thought the above Delice was more, um, Delice-​ious. so we took that.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.