“The first time I tasted this feta, I was enamored,” said Mariah Sparks, a longtime member of the Rainbow cheese department. The feta also speaks to the distinctly queer-affirming culture at Rainbow, especially within its cheese department. began selling the cheese nationwide, and that’s when Rainbow got ahold of it. Most of the shepherds he works with still milk their animals - indigenous Lesbian sheep - by hand. Third-generation cheesemaker Pangiotis Tastanis (a Lesbian, but not a lesbian) makes the cheese the old way: formed out of pure sheep’s milk, brined with super-concentrated salt from a nearby bay. Cheese, a New York City importer, which in turn acquires it from a cheesemaker in a village called Agra, on the island of Lesbos. Rainbow’s Lesbian feta, a “true” version of the cheese, is sourced from Essex St.
Francesca Tamse / Special to The Chronicle Right: Local shopper Juliann Lam finds Lesbian Feta at Rainbow Grocery Coop in San Francisco, Tuesday, Nov.23, 2021. in New York and renamed to “Greek (Lesbian) Feta” at Rainbow Grocery Coop in San Francisco, Tuesday, Nov.23, 2021. Left: Lesbian Feta is imported from Essex St. Much of the “feta” on the market here would legally have to be called “Greek-style cheese” in the EU. To qualify as feta, the cheese must be made in certain regions of Greece from either pure sheep’s milk or sheep’s milk mixed with goat’s milk in a 70/30 ratio. But in the European Union, feta is a protected food whose production is tightly controlled by law, much like Neapolitan pizza or Champagne. The pre-crumbled white cheese you can find at Safeway is less feta and more of an idea of feta, with little tying it to Greek cheesemaking tradition. Typically, most people in the United States who eat feta don’t really know where it comes from. Questions about Lesbian feta can lead to trips down some fascinating rabbit holes: about artisanal cheesemaking, the nuance of milk content, and the real taste difference in single-origin products. It’s a feta that’s rooted in place and that’s really important.” Seen pictures of the sheep grazing in the area. And simply calling it “Greek feta” would erase the product’s singularity, its specialness: “We know where our feta’s from. We know if we call it that, people will go, ‘What do you mean?’” For a cheesemonger, getting a customer to ask questions, and hopefully try the cheese, is a victory in itself, he said. “There’s two things about calling it Lesbian feta,” said Gordon Edgar, Rainbow’s cheese buyer, by phone interview.
The cheese comes from a cheesemaker on the Greek island of Lesbos, but whether or not it’s a queer icon is a matter of opinion.Ĭheesemonger Gordon Edgar arranging cheeses at Rainbow Grocery Coop in San Francisco, Tuesday, Nov.23, 2021.
So do actual lesbians make it? Well, yes. He told me that, about once a week, he overhears some customer say, “Lesbian feta? Well, I’ve obviously gotta get that!” When I had the fortune to meet a Rainbow cheesemonger out in the wild, I asked him about it.