Two award-winning North Otago culinary producers, Whitestone Cheese and Riverstone Kitchen, have combined to produce three varieties of gourmet cheese rolls which, depending on today's reaction, could become a regular feature around the South.
A trial this week received positive feedback.
Whitestone Cheese chief executive Simon Berry said the cheese rolls would be supplied to Dunedin's Forsyth Barr Stadium in the future, and could also be on the menu at Whitestone Cheese's cafe in Oamaru and special events.
''We are feeling our way into this - to make simple food using gourmet products.
''There are a lot of options, depending on how they go, including even supplying a mix for people to make into rolls at home,'' he said yesterday.
Riverstone Kitchen's award-winning chef, Bevan Smith, had designed two of the cheese rolls and was making the mixture. Whitestone was assembling the rolls last night.
Mr Berry estimated 500-600 would be produced for today, and possibly more depending on the cheese roll ''production line'', which involved only one staff member although others might be called in to help.
One of the rolls is a traditional family recipe from Sue Berry, Whitestone Cheese's co-founder, which was fine-tuned in the 1980s for shearers on the family farm.
The two other flavours - developed by Mr Smith over three months - are a chipotle steak with creamy havarti cheese and a Riverstone Kitchen Cheese peach chutney with Windsor Blue cheese.
Over time, seasonal variation cheese rolls could be produced using other North Otago produce.
''Everyone loves a good cheese roll - Whitestone makes such good cheese and we love pushing people's culinary buttons, so we are pretty excited to see the public verdict from the festival,'' Mr Smith said.
The three rolls will be sold together for $5.
