Food&Drink / Event
The $93 Question: Should Brooklyn Cross the River for Murray's Pickles & Cheese Pairing?
Murray's Cheese is running a $20-off Pickles & Cheese Pairing on July 23 — at its Bleecker Street classroom in Manhattan, not in Brooklyn. Here is the full ticket math, the transit math, the fine print, and the Brooklyn counter-offer, so you can decide with numbers instead of vibes.
Matt RowanHow much should ninety minutes of cheese cost? That is the real question hiding inside the event listing that keeps popping up in Brooklyn feeds this month: "$20 OFF! Pickles & Cheese Pairing" at Murray's Cheese, Thursday, July 23, 6:30 to 8pm. Tickets are listed from $87 with the discount already baked into the name.
Before you tap Get Tickets, one correction that matters: this class is not in Brooklyn. Murray's runs its tasting classrooms at the flagship shop at 254 Bleecker Street in Manhattan's West Village. If you live in Park Slope, Boerum Hill, or anywhere along the F line, you are signing up for a cross-borough trip, and a cross-borough trip belongs in the budget like everything else.
So let's do what we always do here. Price the dream, then pay less for it — or at least know exactly what you are paying.
Who Is This Class Actually For?
Murray's education calendar is built for civilians, not cheese professionals. The Pickles & Cheese Pairing is a guided tasting: you sit down, a Murray's expert walks you through four cheeses and four briny accompaniments, and you build bites until the pairing logic clicks. House sparkling white and red wine are poured alongside. No knife skills required, no homework, no exam.
That format suits three kinds of people. First, the date-night planner who wants a structured activity instead of another dinner reservation — ninety minutes with built-in conversation material. Second, the food-curious friend group that keeps saying "we should do something different" and never does. Third, the solo learner who wants to walk into any cheese shop afterward and order like they mean it. If you already know why a cornichon cuts through a triple-crème, you can skip the tuition and spend the $87 at the counter instead.
One access note that Murray's states plainly: the classrooms sit upstairs and downstairs at the Bleecker Street store and are not wheelchair accessible. If stairs are a problem for anyone in your group, this specific format is off the table, and it is better to know that before checkout, not after.
What $87 Actually Buys at 254 Bleecker
Break the ticket down and the price stops being abstract:
| What you get | Details |
|-|-|
| Guided tasting | 1.5 hours with a Murray's cheese expert |
| Cheese | 4 cheeses, chosen and sequenced for the theme |
| Accompaniments | 4 briny/pickled pairings built into bites |
| Drinks | House sparkling white wine and red wine |
| Ticket price | Listed from $87 ($20 off, per the event title) |
Is that a deal? Context helps. On the same July calendar, Murray's lists Pasta Making & Cheese Tasting at $87, Italian Cheese & Wine Tasting at $98, and Burrata Making at $113 — and the July sessions shown on the schedule are marked sold out with waitlists. Against its own shelf, a from-$87 pairing class sits at the cheap end of the menu, and the demand signal says people pay it without blinking.
The venue is part of what you are buying, whether you admit it or not. Murray's has anchored this stretch of Bleecker Street for decades, ages wheels in caves beneath the shop, and the counter downstairs is one of the most serious cheese retail floors in the country. Taking the class here is the difference between learning to swim in a pool and learning in the ocean the fish actually live in.
A budget is a passport with math.
The Wine Is Doing Two Jobs
A quick word on the pours, because they change the value math. The sparkling white is not a party favor — high-acid bubbles reset your palate between bites, which is the only way four cheeses and four pickles stay distinct instead of blurring into one salty average. The red does the opposite job: it shows you how tannin argues with brine, which is half the reason the pairing principles stick.
That is also why this format beats buying a bottle and a wedge and winging it at home. The sequencing is the product. Anyone can eat cheese and pickles; the class sells you the order of operations, and order is the thing you keep long after the wine is gone.
The Cross-Borough Math
Now the part the listing does not price for you. From brownstone Brooklyn, the trip is honest but not free. The subway base fare went up to $3.00 in January 2026, so the round trip is $6.00 per person, full stop. The F train runs from Bergen Street in Boerum Hill to West Fourth Street–Washington Square without a transfer, and from there it is a short walk down Sixth Avenue to the shop. Budget about 35 to 45 minutes door to door each way from central Brooklyn, more if you are coming from deeper on the line.
Put it in one table, per person:
| Line item | Cost |
|-|-|
| Ticket (from) | $87.00 |
| Subway, round trip | $6.00 |
| Floor total | $93.00 |
| Time cost | \~1.5 hours of transit + 1.5 hours of class |
The $6.00 is nothing. The time is not nothing. A Thursday 6:30pm start means leaving Brooklyn by roughly 5:30, which for most people means leaving work sharp and eating dinner after 8:30 back home. That is the real cross-borough tax: three hours of your evening wrapped around ninety minutes of cheese. For a date or a planned night out, that trade is fine — good, even, because the walk through the Village is part of the evening. For a casual "sounds fun" impulse, it is worth a pause.
Every dollar you don't spend buys another day.
The Brooklyn Counter-Offer
Here is the honest version of the "just do it in Brooklyn" argument, because the borough's cheese landscape has real strengths and one real gap.
The gap first: Brooklyn does not currently have an equivalent classroom. Crown Finish Caves, the cheese-aging operation in the old brewery tunnels under Crown Heights, closed back in 2022, and with it went the borough's most atmospheric cheese-event venue. Nothing on the Brooklyn side today matches Murray's structured, wine-poured, expert-led tasting format at this price. If the classroom experience is what you want, the river crossing is the cost of admission.
But if what you actually want is the output — a great board of cheese and briny things, eaten with people you like — Brooklyn sells that over the counter, no ticket required:
• Bklyn Larder (228 Flatbush Avenue, Park Slope) has run one of the borough's best cut-to-order cheese counters since 2009, open daily 10am to 7pm. Tell the monger you are building a pickle-pairing board and let them argue with you; that conversation is a free short course.
• Sahadi's (187 Atlantic Avenue) is the Atlantic Avenue institution with specialty cheese cases plus an entire aisle-level universe of olives, pickled vegetables, and preserved things, open daily 10am to 7pm. It is the single best one-stop shop in Brooklyn for the "briny accompaniments" half of this equation.
The DIY play: set yourself a hard $45 counter budget for two people — two or three modest cut-to-order wedges, one jar of cornichons or a scoop of mixed pickles, a baguette — and pour whatever bottle is already on your shelf. You will not get the sequencing lesson or the expert, and I will not pretend a self-taught Tuesday board equals a guided tasting. But you will eat extremely well for roughly half the price of one ticket, and the counter staff at either shop will hand you more pairing opinions than you can carry.
Fine Print That Costs Money
Murray's class policies are stricter than a typical Eventbrite hang, and every line here is a place people lose money:
• No refunds after purchase. Read that twice. This is not a "plans changed" friendly ticket.
• Transfers are allowed once, and only if you request them more than 48 hours before the class date. Inside 48 hours, you are donating your seat.
• It can sell out. The July classes on Murray's own calendar show sold-out status with waitlists. If you want the 23rd, deciding "sometime next week" is how you end up on a waitlist.
• Stairs are mandatory. The classroom spaces are not wheelchair accessible, as noted above.
• Confirm before you ride. Any live event can shift; give the listing one last look on the day before you get on the train.
None of this is a knock — tight refund rules are how a 12-seat tasting stays viable. But a no-refund ticket plus a cross-borough Thursday commute means you should book it like a commitment, not a maybe.
The Verdict, in Dollars
Worth it or not? Three clean answers for three budgets:
Book it if you want the actual class experience — the expert, the sequencing, the wine doing its two jobs — and a planned night out. At a $93 floor per person, it prices like a mid-range Brooklyn dinner for one and teaches you something you keep. Against Murray's own $87–$113 calendar, the discounted pairing class is the value pick.
Build it if the goal is the board, not the lesson. Bklyn Larder or Sahadi's, $45 cap for two, zero transit, and you keep your whole evening. Half the money, none of the curriculum.
Skip it if Thursday-evening Manhattan logistics turn a fun plan into a stress plan. Murray's runs pairing classes on a rolling calendar; a class you can actually relax at is worth more than a discount you resent.
Your First Step
One small move today, whichever lane you pick:
1. If you're booking: get the ticket now, not Friday — and screenshot the 48-hour transfer rule next to your calendar entry.
2. If you're building: walk into Bklyn Larder or Sahadi's this week, say "$45, pickle-friendly cheese board for two," and take whatever education the counter gives you for free.
3. Either way: put $6.00 of honesty in the plan for the train, or $0 and a smug walk home down Flatbush.
Lists beat luck. Enjoy the brine.
Murray's Cheese (Bleecker Street), 254 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10014