Review: Creamy Original Cheese from Chao

Creamy Original Chao slices are a vegan cheese product sold by Field Roast. They don’t specifically label the cheese as gluten free on the package, but the product contains no gluten ingredients.

Chao Cheese Background

Field Roast is a company that makes plant-based meats and cheeses. They were founded in Seattle in 1997 and focus on using whole food ingredients. Most of their products are not gluten free, because wheat gluten is a popular ingredient in fake meats, but their Chao cheeses do not contain any gluten ingredients. I have celiac disease and am very sensitive and their cheeses haven’t ever caused any reactions for me, but please note that this product is not certified gluten free.

Field Roast currently offers 5 different styles of Chao Cheese Slices: Creamy Original, Tomato Cayenne, Smoked Original, Spicy Original, and Garden Herb.

Here’s the full list of the ingredients in Chao Creamy Original: filtered water, coconut oil, modified corn and potato starch, potato starch, fermented tofu (soybeans, water, salt, sesame oil, calcium sulfate), sea salt, natural flavor, olive extract (antioxidant used as a preservative) and beta carotene.

Chao Creamy Original Cheese Review

Chao has a swiss-like smooth texture with a bit of squeakiness when cold, along with a very mild and inoffensive flavor. Smells just lightly tangy, with much less of a strong odor than other vegan cheese products. This is a good vegan cheese option is you’re not a fan of stinky or aged cheeses. It’s a good cheese to snack on or use in a cold cuts sandwich (my favorite is chao + ham on a schar ciabatta roll!), but it also melts really well for grilled cheeses.

All in all, this product doesn’t really taste like any cheese I remember, but it stands in well enough to satisfy my cravings for cheese. I definitely prefer it to other common store brands if I can’t find Violife or Miyokos, because it’s not at all grainy and has some tanginess.