Trying Thomasville: Sweetgrass Dairy cheesecake

Published 9:03 am Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Being a Thomasville native, I often find myself going to the same restaurants, ordering the same coffee drinks and doing the same activities over and over again. I want to get out of my small town rut, so this summer, I’m challenging myself to go try new things at the same places I’ve been going to for nearly twenty years.

Whether it’s a seasonal coffee, a new exercise class or a staff favorite I’ve never tried off the menu, I’ll be reviewing it. This is the second entry of “Trying Thomasville.”

Once a week, I’ll be trying different foods, beverages and activities in town. If you have any suggestions or know about any hidden gems, let me know!

Sweetgrass Dairy

This week, I went to Sweetgrass Dairy for dinner. This isn’t a new occurrence for me by any means. Sweetgrass is one of my all-time favorite restaurants.

Sweetgrass is a town-favorite cheese shop and restaurant, with a tight-knit staff and family-owned roots. Their cheeses appear in restaurants and grocery stores far beyond Thomasville, though. With spicy pimento, Lil’ Moo spread, Thomasville Tomme and plenty of others, they have a cheese for each personal preference and flavor palette.

When I go there, I always order the same cheeseburger with Thomasville Tomme, paired with their hand-cut fries (which are amazing with their garlic aioli and spicy ketchup). It’s a 10/10. That goes without saying. I actually have a weekly Sweetgrass burger-date tradition with my mom, as cheesy as it sounds.

I noticed the menu had changed since I went last time, though. They had some new additions that I asked our waitress about, but the newest addition (that I immediately ordered before she could say anything else) was their blueberry cheesecake.

It wasn’t even on the menu and she said they’d been serving it for about a month. I am a dessert girl, through-and-through, so I just had to try it.

Blueberry Cheesecake

I knew this dessert was going to be good when I saw it appear from the kitchen. It was a perfect cheesecake sliver the size of my face, dripping with blueberry sauce and perfectly crusted in golden graham cracker crust. The first bite disproved my original impression of the desert. It wasn’t good. No, good doesn’t describe it.

It was the best cheesecake I’d ever eaten. The base was light and airy, with a faintly sweet, tart, melt-in-your-mouth delicious flavor. The crust was firm and buttery. The blueberry compote was everything. It was perfectly balanced, between the tartness of the Lil’ Moo-based cheesecake and the natural sweetness of the berries. There was a hint of salt that brightened the flavor even more.

I thought it was so interesting that they used their own cheese spread in place of cream cheese. It tasted identical to the original dessert, but the texture was so much better and fluffier. The cheesecake is made out of house, but just down the street, at Sweet Cacao, a local chocolatier. The slice cost $9, but I’d pay double for that quality and taste. Definitely worth it.

If you even remotely like cheesecake, blueberries or dessert at all, you’ll love this. It is everything I want in a dessert, especially a cheesecake. Perfectly balanced, sweet, tart and fresh. It is the lightest cheesecake I’ve ever had, but somehow still the richest in flavor.

That is why I give Sweetgrass Dairy’s new blueberry cheesecake a 10/10.

This is definitely my new favorite menu item, despite it not even being on the menu. I might be replacing my burger-dates with cheesecake-dates.