This Philly cheesemonger was just crowned the best in the country

If you’re lucky enough to have a go-to cheese store in your life, you know the value of a good cheesemonger — the person behind the counter who guides you from Appenzeller to Manchego to Stilton and beyond, shaving off free samples as they go.

But unless you’re hardcore, you likely don’t know that American cheesemongers face off in a 14-year-old Top Chef-style competition called the Cheesemonger Invitational — and a Main Line native with a long, Philly-famous cheese resumé just took home this year’s title.

Perrystead Dairy cheesemaker Jake Heller beat out 44 competitors from across the country in this year’s Cheesemonger Invitational, which took place in Brooklyn late last month. He outscored the rest in speed-cutting and speed-wrapping, cheese trivia, and blind cheese tasting/identification, among other feats.

Heller, 28, is 12 years into his cheese career. He got his start in 2012 at Narberth Cheese Company while he was still a student at Lower Merion High School. It was his first job ever, and it was love at first bite. “I was eating Kraft singles and smoked Gouda before I started working with cheese,” Heller says. “It just blew my mind, this really wide variety of what seemed to be very fancy cheeses that I knew nothing about.”

Working at Narberth Cheese Co., Heller’s curiosity bloomed: He became a student of cheese, diving into cheese literature and making flashcards of hundreds of European variants. “I sort of ignored my homework, I got so obsessed with cheese,” he says. “It really took over my life.” (Heller reports that his parents were supportive from the start.)

When he moved to Center City to attend Temple University, he landed a job at Downtown Cheese in Reading Terminal Market. The 25-year-old shop, taken over by owners Rachel and Adam Conroy in 2022, has a longstanding reputation in the industry, so while Heller was earning a degree in environmental studies, he also started attending food shows and cheese conventions like the American Cheese Society’s annual conference.

With time, Heller informally graduated from a clerk at a cheese store to true cheesemonger: an expert seller who can speak to a cheese’s make and model, origin, taste, pairing potential, and more all the while engaging the customer. A good monger educates and entertains, steering you to new cheese-plate heights.

Heller only became comfortable identifying as a cheesemonger nine years into his career. He used to refer to himself as a cheese enthusiast, but realized “my life had become intertwined with cheese,” he says. “It’s like being a musician, it’s not how many songs you make, but how dedicated you are to the lifestyle.”

Heller stayed at Downtown Cheese for seven years, rising from monger to general manager. In 2023 — the same year he started working at Perrystead, breaking into cheesemaking — he placed second in the Academy of Cheese’s Young Cheesemonger of the Year competition, edging out fellow mongers from Spain, France, Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. (A 21-year-old Welsh monger took home the title.)

That contest primed Heller for this year’s Cheesemonger Invitational, which featured a more crowded field of competitors and several rounds of tests, starting with a multiple-choice exam that covered everything from the history of pasteurization to coagulating enzymes. A blind taste test of protected-origin cheese followed. (Heller’s fairly sure there was a French Roquefort and a gorgonzola dolce, but he’s still not sure he nailed the rest.)

Next, the mongers were asked to cut precisely a quarter-pound of cheese in under 45 seconds. (“The closer you are, the more points you get,” Heller explains. “I got .24 pounds, and then .22.″) They got another 45 seconds to neatly wrap those wedges — something that’s harder than it sounds.

“It’s like origami,” Heller says.

The mongers were then asked to identify flavor extracts inside six mystery vials — a test made harder by having just cut wedges of stinky cheese. Heller had a workaround. “I was going face to the counter smelling the vials.”

The centerpiece of the competition began just before the public rolled in. The 45 contestants were each assigned a few cheeses and tasked with preparing three items: a beverage pairing, a “perfect plate,” and 100 bites to be served to the audience. They had 15, 30, and 90 minutes, respectively, for each segment.

To pair with Hill Valley Dairy’s Luna, Heller blended a mango smoothie with a sweet whey from Perrystead, then carbonated it just before serving. (”It was hot in there, so I think the ice-cold tropical beverage cooled down the judges.”) For a perfect plate, he riffed on the Japanese vibes of Point Reyes’ TomaRashi — a toma flavored with shichimi togarashi — and made a bento box, placing fish-shaped slices of cheese over rice, alongside soy cucumbers, sesame salad, sweet pickled carrot, egg salad, and seaweed crackers. Then he skewered 100 pieces of smoked spec, stuffed olives, spicy pickled okra, cherry tomatoes, and Neal’s Yard Montgomery cheddar — a horseradish-y number — to make Bloody Mary bites. (Another Philly contestant, Max Lazar of Di Bruno Bros., helped Heller complete his bites in time.)

The field was narrowed to six finalists who then took the stage, duking it out in more speed-cutting and wrapping, cheese trivia, and a segment in which each monger had 60 seconds to give the audience an elevator pitch on their favorite cheese. Heller chose Sainte-Maure de Touraine, a young goat’s milk cheese that’s rolled in vegetable ash before being shipped to retailers to ripen in-house. It forms a bumpy, brain-like rind as it ages; slice it open and it’s white, chalky in the middle, creamy and smooth on the edges. At Downtown Cheese, he would produce this for customers with some theatrics: “I’d go, ‘Wait one second!’ I’d run to the back of the store and I’d take out a small wooden box and I’d reveal to them these little moldy goat logs that just look wild and funky.”

Heller’s unbridled enthusiasm bubbles over just remembering his performance at the Cheesemonger Invitationals, so it’s no surprise that he charmed the judges and swept the competition, scoring 328 points — 13 points higher than the second-place finisher. He won an enormous, cow-stamped trophy; a cash prize; a Boska cheese cutting board with a spring-loaded cutting wire; an engraved knife set; and a forthcoming trip to Europe.

Looking back, Heller couldn’t have predicted his high school job would mold his future so much. He’s soaking up a very different perspective as a professional cheesemaker now, but mongering is still on his brain: He’s eyeing up the Mondial Du Fromage, or the “Olympics of Cheese,” as he puts it. Heller hopes more young people will take advantage of the cheese circuit, too.

“If you have a little enthusiasm for what you’re doing in the dairy industry, there are companies and sponsors who would be very happy to send you all around the world to learn more about cheese,” he says. “It’s just a great way to have fun with your work.”