There is a shop on Oak Lawn that has been quietly running one of the best cheese counters in the country for going on seventeen years, and most of Dallas still drives past it without stopping. That is their loss. Scardello sits at 3511 Oak Lawn Avenue in a 1929 building with wood floors, an original tin ceiling, exposed brick walls, and enough natural light that the cheese case practically glows. It is the type of place that makes you slow down the moment you walk in, because the person behind the counter is genuinely happy to talk about what is in front of you, and that is not something most food retail in Dallas offers anymore.
The shop is named after Pete Scardello, who was Rich Rogers‘ maternal grandfather. Rogers grew up in a small town in West Texas, and Pete was the person who taught him that food exists to pull people together at a table and give them a reason to stay. Rogers spent years running a freelance film and video production company before he figured out what he was supposed to do with that lesson. In 2006 he flew to New York and spent three days in an intensive class for aspiring cheese professionals taught by two legends in the field. He came home certain. Two years of permit hell and plumbing problems followed, and then Scardello opened in 2008 — the first serious standalone cheese shop in Dallas.
Rogers holds the American Cheese Society’s Certified Cheese Professional designation, which is the credential that separates cheesemongers from people who just like cheese. He carries about 150 cut-to-order cheeses at any given time. Roughly half are American, with a meaningful focus on Texas dairies and creameries that most Dallas eaters have never encountered. The European selection is smaller but chosen with the same exactness — nothing is there to fill space. His staff, who he calls Cheese Enthusiasts rather than employees, operate with the same low-pressure generosity. Walk in without knowing what you want and you will walk out with something better than you would have chosen yourself.
Scardello also has a second location inside the Dallas Farmers Market at 920 South Harwood, where the focus shifts toward grilled cheese sandwiches and a tighter cut-to-order selection. The Oak Lawn shop is the one to visit when you have thirty minutes and an appetite to learn something. Both locations are worth knowing about.
Seven cheeses worth asking for right now, in no particular order.
Époisses. This is Rich Rogers’ desert island cheese, and once you taste it you understand why. It comes from Burgundy, where monks have been making it since the sixteenth century. The rind is washed in marc de Bourgogne, a grape pomace brandy, which gives it an amber color and a smell that will clear the room if you open it at the wrong moment. Inside, the paste is creamy and almost liquid at room temperature, with deep brothy and fermented notes and a richness that coats your palate and lingers. It is challenging and extraordinary in equal measure. Buy a small round, open it at room temperature, and eat it with crusty bread and a glass of Burgundy. Do not apologize to anyone for the smell.
Brillat-Savarin. Named after the eighteenth-century French gastronome who wrote that a meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye, which is the kind of quote that earns a lifetime of tribute. The cheese is a triple cream from Burgundy — cow’s milk, with heavy cream added before coagulation, giving it a fat content somewhere north of seventy-five percent. The result is a soft, bloomy-rind wheel that is buttery and lush and almost impossibly smooth on the tongue. Rogers calls it one of the two best-selling cheeses in the case, and the reason is obvious. It pairs with fruit, it pairs with Champagne, it pairs with the last quarter of a good bottle of red. It is the gateway drug of serious cheese.
Crémeux de Bourgogne. The other triple cream Rogers reaches for when he wants something in that category. Made in the same Burgundy tradition as Brillat-Savarin but slightly lighter on the palate, with a bit more tang from the culture. The paste is silky, the rind is thin and bloomy, and the flavor is clean and milky with a gentle acidity at the finish. If Brillat-Savarin is a long leisurely evening, Crémeux de Bourgogne is the same evening but with a slightly earlier bedtime. Both belong on the same board.
Prairie Breeze. An Iowa cheddar from Milton Creamery that Rogers describes as irresistible, and he is not wrong. Prairie Breeze is a sweeter style of cheddar — milder than a sharp English but more complex than most domestic cheddars — with a paste that has crystallized slightly as it aged, giving you tiny crunchy pockets of tyrosine scattered through a firm, smooth body. The sweetness and the crunch together are the thing. Rogers also says it makes killer grilled cheese, which is the highest compliment a cheese can receive and is fully accurate. Buy a chunk for the cheese board and a chunk for the kitchen.
Veldhuizen Redneck Cheddar. Two hours west of Dallas in Dublin, Texas, the Veldhuizen family has been making cheese in a way that most Texas dairy farmers have long since abandoned — small-batch, unhurried, with raw milk from their own herd grazing on 180 pesticide-free acres. Stuart and Connie Veldhuizen started the operation in 2000 after Stuart walked away from a co-op system that mixed his carefully tended milk with everyone else’s and sold it under a stranger’s label. The Redneck is their cheddar, made with curds soaked in Shiner Bohemian Black before pressing, which gives the finished wheel a malty sweetness and a tart tang that no other cheddar in the case carries. It tastes like it came from somewhere specific, which is the whole point of a cheese like this. It is a Texas cheese that tastes like Texas, and Scardello is one of the few places in Dallas carrying it.
Mozzarella Company Burrata. Paula Lambert has been making cheese in Deep Ellum since 1982, and her burrata — a pouch of fresh mozzarella filled with stracciatella and heavy cream — is the Dallas-made cheese that belongs on every board in this city. It is made two miles from Scardello’s Oak Lawn shop and sold at the counter. Tear it open, drizzle it with good olive oil and a little flaked salt, add a few cherry tomatoes and a torn basil leaf, and that is a dish. The sweetness and the fresh-milk flavor are unlike anything that traveled to get here, and Lambert has been making it that way for forty-three years.
The Texas seasonal selection. This one changes, which is the whole point of asking for it by name. Rogers keeps a rotating selection of Texas creamery cheeses that almost nobody else in Dallas carries — small producers from Hill Country, the Panhandle, East Texas, the Rio Grande Valley. Whatever is in the case when you visit will be different from what was there six weeks ago, and the person behind the counter will have a story about where it came from and why it is worth buying. Ask what is in from Texas. Let them tell you. That is how Scardello works at its best.
Scardello also runs monthly cheese classes, both in-person at the Oak Lawn shop and online, for anyone who wants to spend an evening learning how to taste more carefully. Gift boxes and custom boards are available for local pickup. The monthly cheese club ships. Hours at Oak Lawn are Monday through Saturday eleven to six, Sunday one to six. Phone is 214-219-1300. The second location at the Dallas Farmers Market at 920 South Harwood is open during market hours. Start with the Époisses if you want the full experience and are not afraid of something that will make you feel like you are eating somewhere important. Start with Prairie Breeze if you want something that will make everyone at the table reach for a second piece.
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