It’s the ‘grater cheese heist’, and chef Jamie Oliver wants to help solve it

British chef Jamie Oliver investigates the case of the stolen cheddar.

Oliver, who became famous as The naked chef on TV by stripping food down to its essentials, went bold in an otherwise serious plea to his social media followers to help solve the mystery of the missing 22 tonnes of award-winning cheddar worth £300,000 (RM1.7 million) that was stolen in a scam.

Oliver called it the “grater cheese heist” and told his 10.5 million Instagram fans to be on the lookout for “truckloads of very fancy cheese.”

Nearly 1,000 wheels of fabric-wrapped artisan cheddar were swiped from Neal’s Yard Dairy by a scammer posing as a wholesaler for a major French retailer, the company said. The cheese disappeared before the company realized it was a scam and reported the theft on October 21.

“If the deal seems too golden to be true, it probably is! Let’s find these cheese stealers,” Oliver wrote.

Cheddar, named after the village in south-west England where it originates, is the world’s best-known cheese because it does not have the protected status of other regional products such as champagne and is therefore produced in many countries. But there are only a small number of genuine British cheddar makers, Oliver said.

“These are some or most of the cheeses that were stolen,” he said in a video accompanying his post.

The cheeses were from three makers: Hafod Welsh organic cheddar, Westcombe cheddar and Pitchfork cheddar.

Detectives from Scotland Yard and international authorities are looking for the perpetrators.

Neal’s Yard Dairy, a distributor, wholesaler and retailer of British artisan cheese, has asked international cheesemongers to be on the lookout for the stolen cheese, especially in 10kg and 24kg blocks.

“If anyone hears that expensive cheese is being sold cheaply, it’s probably untruths,” Oliver said. – AP