NewCanaanite.com (https://newcanaanite.com/tag/plum-plums-cheese)
Today’s installment of our local holiday shopping series takes us to Plum Plums Cheese on Cherry Street. The shop recently underwent a seamless change of ownership. On Thursday, we stopped in to chat with Jo Bloom, who has been operating Plum Plums with husband Stephen Bloom since just before Thanksgiving. Here’s our conversation. ***
New Canaanite: What was your thought in becoming the owner of Plum Plums in New Canaan, and how’s it going?
New Canaan’s Chris Falsetta told a stadium full of community friends and supporters Sunday morning that his then 12-year-old daughter, Gracie, was diagnosed with leukemia almost exactly one year ago, on Oct. 13, 2022.
Since that time, many people have approached Falsetta and asked how the past year has been, he said. “And I say, ‘It’s been incredible,’ and I usually get puzzled looks,” Falsetta said from midfield at Dunning Stadium under sunny, warm skies minutes before the 2023 N.C. Combine began. “ ‘What do you mean incredible?’ Well, it’s been incredibly tough, right? You know that.
‘Who Knew?’ is sponsored by Walter Stewart’s Market. Once upon a time, men dressed like Cary Grant, and sandwiches were what people ate for lunch. From kindergarten classrooms to corporate boardrooms, one could observe people at midday consuming an ingeniously portable combination of ‘bread’ and ‘things.’ There was an order to life, and while I’m not suggesting that correlation is causation, it’s worth noting that, back when we all ate sandwiches, nobody wore Celtics jerseys on airplanes or flossed their teeth on the subway.
Perhaps it’s a profusion of choice–granted, much of it positive and health-minded—that’s gotten us away from such norms. Kindergarteners, if Instagram is to be believed, now dine on elaborate bento boxes of hand-shelled edamame, hummus, and gluten-free, organic pretzels. Office folks can now Uber Eats an uninspired hexagonal tub from Sweetgreen, undertip the guy in the lobby, and sprint back to volley emails into oblivion.
It’s also the sandwich’s fault, or at least the modern fast-casual incarnation of the sandwich’s fault, that our ardor for a handheld square of lunchtime bliss has cooled. Have you ever been to a Panera?
A local business has stepped up to help sponsor a community event coming this fall to benefit a special nonprofit organization. Plum Plums Cheese on Cherry Street is “starting line sponsor” for the 2023 New Canaan Combine, benefiting the Gracie Fund for Pediatric Cancer. Created by New Canaan’s Falsetta family—here’s an interview with dad Chris about the effort— the Gracie Fund is named for the Falsettas’ 12-year-old daughter who was diagnosed with leukemia last year and is undergoing treatments. The Combine—organized by House of Telos owner Rebecca Kimball, a 2004 New Canaan High School graduate (podcast here)—is a fun athletic competition between the New Canaan Police and Fire Departments that also brings in community members to fundraise for a good cause. We put some questions to Gayle Martin, who owns Plum Plums Cheese with her husband Michael Riahi, about getting involved with the Combine and Gracie Fund.
Who Knew?’ is sponsored by Walter Stewart’s Market. Nobody comes to the leafy Connecticut suburbs for our heart-shaped hot tubs. Not only is their resale value questionable, but surely P&Z has a longstanding regulation against Atlantic City chic. All the same, New Canaan can be the perfect spot for a dreamy date, even when your date is the person with whom you’ve been filing taxes jointly for decades. You can find romance here in a cozy, candlelit meal, a meandering drive down a country road, or playing footsie while you read the parking ticket appeals.