Our pal Amanda over at Metrocurean reports that West Coast import Cowgirl Creamery’s opening is imminent. And although we look forward to the cheese purveyor’s landing in the Penn Quarter, excellent cheese shops — such as Philadelphia’s DiBruno Bros., Greenwich Village’s Murray’s Cheese Shop, and local fromagerie Cheesetique — often present to us a paradox of choice. That is, faced with too many good options from which to choose, we run the risk of choosing none.

The welcome limitation of excessive choice is among the reasons we enjoy ordering cheese plates at restaurants that care about the cheese they serve. A chef or manager — often with the help of the cheesemonger — will have selected a few winners, each of which is different, from among the classic categories (cow’s milk, goat’s milk, and sheep’s milk). Portion sizes are necessarily trimmed. Nuts, raisins, quince paste or chestnut honey might appear with your cheeses. And, if you enjoy food and wine pairings, you might be able to order a nip of port with that pungent blue cheese.

We’ve loved cheese plates at Restaurant Eve (where we found yak’s milk cheese!) and at Dino. But our favorite spot for cheese is Georgetown’s Mendocino Grille and Wine Bar. The older sibling of Capitol Hill’s Sonoma is a stealth gem — and not just for its cheese plate, which is among the very best in town. Their appetizers and entrees, though undoubtedly on the expensive side, teem with seasonal and local ingredients that chef Drew Trautmann blends wonderfully. And the West Coast-only wine list (with the exception of dessert wines) features some phenomenal smaller producers (Paso Robles’ Garretson Wine Company and Mendocino County’s Lazy Creek Vineyards, for example) and oddities (pinot meunier or charbono rosé, anyone?) among the power players of the Napa Valley. But it’s the balanced and thoughtful cheese plate that keeps us returning.