Cheese shop

This evening, I told Katherine I'd be at Prince and Mott "in a minute" but got sidetracked. A new store called "Despana: the finest from Spain," on Broome, beckoned. It (and, soon, I) was filled with samples of all sorts of foods, most importantly cheese. I think it's fair to say I ate somewhere between a quarter and a half pound of ridiculously delicious cheese samples before finally (out of both guilt and a neverending greed for cheese) buying two of the kinds I tried. Eventually I tore myself away from Despana and met Katherine, who suggested we go to a tapas bar which she said had good sangria. This is indeed the case, and one oxymoron has been removed from my list. I got a chickpea-based tapas dish, but was still sort of hungry. Luckily, Katherine wanted to see this cheese store I'd been raving about, which led to both of us trying several (more, in my case) types of cheese, before she, too, purchased two different types. I am completely certain that this store will no longer so readily offer samples after our visit. The whole experience was the exact opposite of the Monty Python "Cheese Shop" sketch, in which a man enters a cheese shop and asks for some of a seemingly endless list of cheeses from around the world, only to learn that the store "do[es] not, in fact, have any cheese here at all." Despana is a neverending source of cheese, a "bottomless bowl" of cheese samples. If only I thought there was a chance the fine individuals working at Despana would, after this evening, let me back on the premises.