Cheese, please, say festival's attendees

No matter how you slice it, culture was in abundance at the Seattle Cheese Festival on Saturday.

The festival, continuing today at Pike Place Market, serves up educational seminars, cooking demonstrations and wine tasting. But the main attraction is an array of about 250 different cheeses you can sample and buy. There's goat cheese and sheep cheese; sweet cheese and stinky cheese; cheese from Tuscany and Port Townsend.

On Saturday afternoon, the market's main artery, Pike Place, was clogged with festivalgoers lining up at tents and tables for a toothpick and a taste, standing on tiptoes to peer at spreads and rounds, straining to hear about beechwood plank-aging techniques and the Mountain Cheese Olympics.

Festival founder Pat McCarthy, who owns DeLaurenti Specialty Food & Wine, expected more than 70,000 people to attend the two-day cheese-a-thon.

But you don't have to be a cheese geek to enjoy the second-annual festival. "I'm learning that some of the cheeses look scary, but when you taste them they're good," said Eugene Tafoya of Pittsburg, Calif., who was in town visiting his cousin, Seahawks defensive end Joe Tafoya.

Monica Vanderbush of Capitol Hill said she and her boyfriend spent $80 in about 90 minutes at the festival. "We're the biggest rats here," said Vanderbush's friend Lori Thurlow, who bought a Mother's Day gift, cheese from the Washington State University creamery.

Christopher Wise held his purchase — onion-balsamic vinegar jelly — like it was a winning lottery ticket. "It's a mouth-gasm," Wise said.

McCarthy encouraged festivalgoers to check their inhibitions at the door. "There are no dumb questions," he said. "The [cheese] makers want nothing more than to have curious people taste their products."

Terry and Nancy Beckham of Belltown said they learned that they loved the small-batch artisan cheeses made by Mt. Townsend Creamery. The Beckhams said they also learned which Seattle stores sell such cheeses.

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. The festival is free, although the wine garden and Artisanal Alley, which features only small-batch cheeses, cost $5 each.

Today's seminars, including one titled "Mold — Growth in the Cheese Business," are sold out. But festivalgoers can see chefs from restaurants such as Café Juanita and Lark create dishes with cheese at four cooking demonstrations.

The festival even offers something for kids: a scavenger hunt that takes them around the market's stalls and vendors — like a mouse in a cheese maze — — before culminating in the discovery of a delectable treat.

Tom and Karen Pancredi, visiting from Southern California, said the festival would help people broaden their cheese horizons. "There's a lot more than mozzarella out there," said Karen Pancredi, who has visited cheese makers in Hawaii and England on vacations with her husband.

But Tom Pancredi said he doesn't intend to become a cheese snob. "If it tastes good," he said, "that's all that matters."

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com