LONDON — (AP) — British chef Jamie Oliver is on the case of the stolen cheddar.
Oliver, who rose to fame as “The Naked Chef” on TV by stripping food down to its essentials, got cheeky in an otherwise serious plea to his social media followers to help solve the mystery of the missing 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) of award-winning cheddar worth 300,000 British pounds ($390,000) that was stolen in a scam.
Calling it the “grate cheese robbery,” Oliver told his 10.5 million Instagram fans to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese.”
Nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped artisanal cheddar were swiped from Neal’s Yard Dairy by a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer, the company said. The cheese was gone before the company realized it had been scammed and reported the theft Oct. 21.
“If the deal seems too gouda to be true, …