British chef Jamie Oliver urges followers to help solve the ‘grate cheese robbery’
Nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped artisanal cheddar stolen by a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor
British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is on the case of the stolen cheddar.
Oliver, who rose to fame as The Naked Chef on television by stripping food down to its essentials, got cheeky in an otherwise serious plea to his social media followers to help solve the mystery of the missing 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) of award-winning cheddar worth £300,000 (US$390,000) that was stolen in a scam.
Calling it the “grate cheese robbery”, Oliver told his 10.5 million Instagram fans to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese”.
Nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped artisanal cheddar were stolen from Neal’s Yard Dairy by a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer, the company said. The cheese was gone before the company realised it had been scammed and reported the theft October 21.
“If the deal seems too Gouda to be true, it probably is! Let’s find these cheese stealers,” Oliver wrote.
Cheddar, which is named for the village in southwest England where it originated, is the world’s best-known cheese because it does not have the protected status of other regional products such as champagne and, thus, is produced in many countries. But there are only a small number of real British cheddar makers, Oliver said.