Academy street full of people. Food trucks for everyone’s taste. Live music, kids activities, beautiful weather, and oh yeah…Pimento Cheese!
By all measures, this year’s Cary Pimento Cheese Festival was a huge success and the largest since it began in 2018.
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Ryan O’Quinn, a program coordinator for the new Downtown Cary Park and former outdoor and events specialists who helped organize the Pimento Cheese Festival told us, “Academy street was made for events like this.” continued O’Quinn “And these festivals are a great way to show off our city and bring people downtown.”
Fred and Claude, from Blue Moon Bakery and Cafe, who took 1st Place last year as the best pimento cheese, provided free samples and sold their award winning pimento cheese to the hungry crowds. “We can’t keep up.” Says Claude “We’ve been selling out faster than we can get things over here from the bakery.”
But eating wasn’t the only thing people were doing with the cheese. The festival also let amateurs and professionals alike, take part in a little cheese sculpting.
While it was a close decision between the pimento cheese dog [pictured on the right] the cat [left] and whatever that was in the center, Sarah Kaufmann, known as The Cheese Lady, didn’t keep anyone guessing with her sculpture of the new downtown park.
“When I asked the city what the ‘hot topic’ was this year” Kaufmann said “It was obviously the new downtown park.” So Kaufmann and the city shared pictures and sketches and came up with this year’s inspiration for her sculpture.
According to O’Quinn this year’s crowd probably topped off around 15,000 people. “People really like pimento cheese.”
