Where to eat Pélardon des Cévennes in Montpellier: 3 editor picks

A small flat disc of raw goat cheese from the Cévennes foothills, AOP since 2000. Young it is chalky and lactic; dried it goes hard and intensely goaty, and Montpellier kitchens grill it on toast over salad.

Goats have been kept on the schist and limestone slopes of the Cévennes for as long as the region has been farmed, because the terrain suits nothing larger. The pélardon is made from raw whole milk in discs of about sixty grams, salted and left to ripen for a minimum of eleven days. Kids are born in late winter, so the first cheeses of the year appear in spring and the flavour tracks the season: mild and milky in April, sharp and dry by autumn. The AOP granted in 2000 fixed the area and the method, and every covered market in Montpellier now carries at least one producer selling it at several stages of drying.