'Asians like cheese,' says Phillipe Orrico, executive chef of Western cuisine at Hullett House in Tsim Sha Tsui. The belief that Asians don't have the stomach for the curdled milk, says Orrico, 'is because before, there wasn't much choice and not a lot of good cheese. When importers started bringing in good cheese, people here started to like it and requested more of it.'

All cheese starts out the same. Milk - generally from cow, buffalo, goat or sheep - is coagulated, separating the solid curds from the liquid whey. The curds are drained, packed into moulds and compressed. The quality of the end product depends on many factors, such as the standard of the milk (animals raised in natural environments and given good feed produce better milk); and whether or not the milk is pasteurised (the high heat required in pasteurisation removes the more subtle flavours and kills off 'good' bacteria that add taste). About half of the flavour is down to the work of the affineur (cheese ager), who matures the cheese under precise temperature and humidity levels.

A staple in most European countries, good-quality cheese - artisan cheese, in particular - is fairly new in Hong Kong, and the chance to buy cheese fresh off a wheel is still rare.

'Pasteurised cheese is dead milk, as it's cooked at a high temperature for a certain time. It kills all the flavour and everything else in the milk,' Evrard says. 'It doesn't reflect the work passionate cheesemakers do. It's not cheese. It's industrial.

'If we talk about passion and cheese culture, unpasteurised cheese is what real cheese is. The cheese changes over time and you know it's alive. For pasteurised cheese, it's always the same.'

Evrard, who started learning about cheese when he was 23, has enabled Caprice to serve arguably the best artisan cheese selection in Hong Kong. Cheese lovers can dig into a range of more than 30 cheeses - including a four-year-old Comt?(very rare as most are matured for at most two years) delivered weekly by its sole purveyor, Antony, France's most renowned master affineur. Antony also supplies top restaurants in France such as Alain Ducasse Plaza Athenee, Pierre Gagnaire and L'Arpege.

Evrard keeps the cheeses in a purpose-built room with a controlled humidity of 70 per cent and temperature of 10 degrees Celsius.

At Hullett House, Orrico gets cheese delivered weekly from three French master suppliers - Antony, Phillipe Olivier and Bordier. Orrico frequently talks to the suppliers to keep track of the best cheeses at the particular time.

Classified offers an extensive selection of cheeses from France, Britain, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. When it opened in 2006, on Hollywood Road in Sheung Wan, Classified had Hong Kong's first climate-controlled cheese room, where customers could walk in and sample the wares.

Wendy Wu, a cheese expert who joined Classified three months ago, says cheese shops are an education. 'When customers go from one cheese to another and talk to our staff, they learn a lot, as we have 60 to 70 cheeses,' she says. 'In Asia, people most likely come across cheese at the supermarket where they can only look at what's in the cheese counter.'

Wu prefers cheeses made by small producers with recipes handed down through generations.

'I don't like cheese that tastes 'pale', like people without personalities. It's industrial and people are just trying to make money,' Wu says. 'These cheeses are sold in supermarkets where people have little knowledge of cheese. It's fooling people, and they stop liking cheese,' she says, adding that just because some cheeses share the same name - Brie de Meaux, for instance - they're not all made the same way and some are much better than others.

Orrico compares a good cheese to a fine wine. 'When cheese starts to mature, it has a complex and interesting flavour. Sometimes you can smell the grass or the farm. You get lots of different flavours. The more I learn about cheese, the more interesting it is.'

The best way to learn, all three cheese lovers say, is to taste it and talk about it. This is one of the basics of staff training, and customers can approach staff for advice on cheese.

In Hullett House's The Parlour, Orrico offers a cheese platter during Sunday brunch in which cheeses from each of the three affineurs are served together.

At Caprice, Evrard recommends a connoisseur's cheese-wine pairing. The four-year-old Comte, for instance, is paired with Vin Jaune Chateau Chalon Dom Pichet 1999 - a yellow wine from the same region the cheese is made, to give warmth and a strong flavour of nuts.

Creamy goat cheese goes with dry white wine and, when your palate is dry after eating some aged mimolette, drinking wheat beer like Hoegaarden is a perfect match and freshens the taste buds for more cheeses, he advises.

The cheese-loving trio say they're impressed by Hongkongers' receptiveness to new things and believe it won't be long before locals develop a more sophisticated taste for cheese.

'What surprises me in Hong Kong is that people are very open to all kinds of different cheeses. They taste strong cheese like blue cheese and goat's milk cheese. I can give them all different cheeses and they love to try them,' Orrico says.

'I've full confidence in the [development] of cheese-eating culture in Hong Kong,' Wu says. People are open-minded, they love good food and are willing to try new things.'

Culture club

Caprice (below)

Four Seasons Hotel, 8 Finance Street, Central, tel: 3196 8860

Specialities: more than 30 cheeses from master affineur Bernard Antony, including Comte (four years old), aged Mimolette and anneau du Vic-Bihl.

Classified

108 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, tel: 2525 3445, and branches in Exchange Square, Central (tel: 2147 3454) and Sai Kung (tel: 2529 3454).

Specialities: more than 60 cheeses from Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

Fico International

Tel: 2404 3895

Specialities: weekly deliveries of Herve Mons cheese sold as 1kg and 2kg cheese platters; plus seasonal specialities such as Vacherin. Order Tuesday for delivery the next week.

Great Food Hall

Pacific Place, Admiralty, tel: 2918 9986

Specialities: a selection of Italian, English, Spanish and French cheese, including artisanal cheese by affineur Herve Mons.

St George/ The Parlour

Hullett House, 1881 Heritage, 2A Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, tel: 3988 0220 (St George), 3988 0101 (The Parlour)

Specialities: seasonal cheeses from three master makers - Bernard Antony, Phillipe Olivier and Bordier.