RIP Liberté cream cheese: Montreal bagel lovers mourning end of beloved schmear
Liberté cream cheese — "a source of pride for more than 80 years" — has been discontinued, much to the dismay of bagel lovers in Montreal.
10 comments
Tellemement triste!! C'était très bon et ya aucun fromage à la crème qui arrive a etre bon comme ça. Philadelphia Ark!!!!
Founded by the Kaporovsky family in 1936, Liberté — initially known as Liberty Dairy Products — was created in a building on the corner of St-Urbain and Duluth Streets in Montreal's Plateau-Mont-Royal borough.
From there, the Kaporovskys sold kosher dairy products such as cream cheese, cottage cheese and sour cream to the Jewish community living in the area, according to Romanow.
The company was eventually acquired by multinational yogurt producer Yoplait, and then by General Mills in 2021.
Still, Romanow says Liberté's recipe remained reminiscent of the kind of cream cheese that would have been made when the product was first invented in the late 1800s.
Tabarnak, Liberte was my favourite as well. I had no idea it was discontinued (or that Liberte was owned by General Mills now).
OK this actually sucks. I became a bit of an evangelist for this cream cheese ever since moving to Montreal, getting people who were visiting from out of town/province/country to try it. A lot of people out there really seem to think Philadelphia is as good as it gets and it's just garbage compared to the Liberte product.
I expect what General Mills means with their vague, passive 'oh we would have kept producing this but sadly it's just impossible' statement is something along the lines of 'this quality product doesn't fit into our general ethos of cheapening and encrappening all foodstuffs on our roster, deal with it.'
C’était le seule fromage à la crème qui était du vrai fromage à la crème et pas un mélange de produits chimiques
Fuck le Philadelphia. Ya sérieusement un trou à combler dans la business du fromage en crème. Le prochain qui s’essaye peut se faire du cash.
For years, we'd buy bagels at Van Horne bagel at the Marché de L'ouest before St Viateur was out on the west Island, and we'd get their cream cheese (which must have been Liberté) and it was the best. Until I found Liberté in the grocery store years later.
Very sad. Philly is just garbage in comparison. Too sweet. Wrong texture. Bleh.
Je boycott General Mills. Fini pour moi les Lucky Charms, les Cheerios, pis les pétates en poud’ Betty Croqueur.
It used to be on the shelves even out west. Then it started to become rare. And then vanished. Now all I can think of is the three St Viateur bagels sitting in my freezer that will never know their proper cream cheese.
I'm so perplexed by this statement
"It is with great sadness that we must confirm that we will no longer be able to continue making our Liberté cream cheese, which meets the expectations of our consumers," it reads.
What does that even mean? That you're bad at making it now? That some super secret ingredient just vanished off the face of the planet? Huh? Weird.