“In the side refrigerators, where Vito so carefully arranges the morning's new attractions, you'll find even more examples of a traditional caseificio gone rogue: a wheel of aged goat cheese coated in a rough armor of wild herbs; a thick, blue-veined goat cheese soaked red with purple with Primitivo wine; goat yogurt in half a dozen international flavors.
You won't be surprised to find that the early efforts of the Dicecca boys were met with opposition- both from the family and the regular clientele. Each brother has a story about the resistance he has encountered along the way- the parental eye rolling at the cacao-coated goat cheese, the sisterly skepticism about mango-stuffed burrata, the customers' confusion at the latest experiment to emerge from the lactic laboratory in back. Every story ends the same way: with one or all of the family members doubting the viability of another esoteric cheese, followed by the long, slow acceptance by enough customers to justify its real estate space in the display case.
"When I started making cheese with the Nikka barrel, they made fun of me, said I was destroying the taste of the cheese. Now they're copying me. That's the pattern we always see: at first they make fun, then they start to copy.”