Organized chaos was the theme of the 4th annual Cheesemonger Invitational, held June 29 at Larkin Cold Storage in industrial Long Island City in Queens, N.Y. From the moment the judges arrived just shy of 5 p.m. until the 2013 champion was announced—an hour and a half past schedule—at 10:30 p.m., the event seemed to run on pure adrenaline.
The winners:
- Champion: Justin Trosclair, St. James Cheese Company, New Orleans
- Second place: Nadjeeb Chouaf, Whole Foods Market Mid-Atlantic, Charlottesville, VA
- Third place: Katie Carter, Arrowine & Cheese, Arlington, VA
Earlybirds were greeted with the frenzy of 50-plus cheesemongers, including Sarah Dvorak of San Francisco’s Mission Cheese and finalist Jillian Weber of New York’s Murray’s Cheese in New York, prepping their samples for the first round of the evening’s competition.
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