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community 22 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN With just three tables inside the 900 square foot store and a few more out on the sidewalk outside when weather permits, Marché has become a gathering place for local residents who make it a place to meet during lunch breaks or a stop for a glass of wine and a cheese plate while they're on their round of the nearby shops in Glen Ellyn's historic downtown. "We definitely have customers for whom this is their spot," says Founder Jill Foucré, who opened the store in November, 2015, as an offshoot of Marcel's Culinary Experience, the kitchenware store two doors down the block that she opened in 2011. In the cheese cases that took the place of clothing racks after Foucré bought the former clothing store and gutted it to make her specialty cheese shop, Marché regularly offers about 100 cheeses. About half of them are imported, but for the domestic half of the selection, General Manager Daniel Sirko emphasizes the world- class cheeses made in Illinois' neighboring states. He's made his entire career in the specialty food business, opening Pastoral, Chicago's iconic cheese and charcuterie shop, and then moving on to operating in a couple of foodservice establishments before he got a phone call from Foucré, who asked him to come and help her open a cheese shop in Glen Ellyn. "We seek out farmstead artisan cheeses when we can," he says. "If there's a cheddar from California or Wisconsin, we're more likely to go with the Wisconsin cheese." About half the cheeses in the case belong to a core that Sirko keeps in stock year-round, while the remainder are more seasonal. The store's single best seller, though, does come from California. It's Cypress Grove's Humboldt Fog. "It's so recognizable, and so delicious," Sirko says. The store also offers a range of Manchego cheeses, and those are very popular, as are triple cremes and a house-made pimento cheese. During the summertime, Marché makes its own mozzarella from curd purchased from a New Jersey dairy. The cheese selection is augmented by a selection of artisanal charcuterie, olives and tapenades, locally made chocolates and breadsticks and a selection of small-production wines that can't be found in the town's specialty wine shop. The shop pours seven or eight by the glass and offers a free tasting every Tuesday in a pairing with a complementary cheese. "The popularity of the wine selection has been a happy surprise," Foucré says. "We sell a lot of wine." Marché's proximity to Marcel's, a store that already had a loyal following, meant that Marché had interested customers from the day it opened. There's still some overlap of the two stores' customer of cheese and wine in Chicago suburbs 22 The Cheese Guide of cheese and wine in Chicago suburbs