Apart from the hygiene issues, their "cheeseplatters" are visually interesting. However, to have cheeses, cut up fruit, olives etc. assembled nillywilly with charcuterie (cold meats, whatever you'd like to call it) on one board is just so wrong. Even assuming that nobody is a cheese loving vegetarian who would not touch the stuff, all cheek by jowl on one platter, anyway.
Good point, I never thought of the vegetarian angle. (I'm of the school thought which says I'm cooking one dinner for everybody, celiacs and vegans will discover something substantial they can make a good meal off from the array served, but will not be dictating to other guests or the cook what the menu is.)
I love the new cheeseboard aesthetic, I think they're works of art and really do make your mouth water. Aside from the fact that it is lamentably stingy, I think what's wrong with that big one for Maries' farewell dinner is breadth of access, you couldn't really get in across the board to cut a piece of cheese the size you wanted.
Also, wedges of melon, hard to serve yourself and eat as an hors d'oeuvre. Gobsmacked as I was to see a piece of fresh fruit served at Lalande.
I used to eat a fruit plate made by a trained sushi chef, one of the best restaurant dishes ever. He chose the ripest fruit and cut it up like an angel. Everything was cut into a forkable or fingerable morsel, apples, pears, plums, etc., thinly, almost transparent slices, and fanned out among the piles of berries and cherries. Wouldn't that be the way to cut melon for a cheese plate? Take a 1 1/2 in wedge, slice thinly crosswise, including skin which is nice looking and serves as a handle for eating with fingers. And fan.
I've never seen crudites on a cheese board, I think they deserve a platter of their own. It's confusing visually and inhospitable to have food you touch mixed in with food you shouldn't touch. Crowd control is definitely an aesthetic in presentation.
Here the second-rate deli ham rolls and carrot sticks and puny grape clusters have been used to flesh out the chintzy $12 array of supermarket ticky tacky cheese. That's what I'd call a
duck you plate, decked out with what could be found at the back of the fridge.
People are terrible.