Gabe Mandel stands with toothpick in hand, considering the extra-aged Gouda he's just savored at Balducci's.
"You see how it's kind of crunchy?" he asks. "Those are the tyrosine crystals."
"Well, this is a bad example but they're kind of like natural MSG. But that's a bad way of putting it."
Stunning commentary for the grocery store, but Mandel, who reads books like "Cheese Essentials" for kicks, is extra sharp for his short 16-year aging. To ripen his knowledge of the food he loves best, the Garrett Park teen is heading to New York in July for a cheese internship at Murray's Cheese, a prestigious high-end Greenwich Village boutique.
His mother, Rana, got him the gig when she met Nina Planck, author of "Real Food: What to Eat and Why" and girlfriend of Murray's proprietor Rob Kaufelt.
"I said, my son is this cheese freak and he's been reading all these cheese books, do you think we could do something?" she said.
Mandel went to Murray's for an interview and secured a three-week position, through which he'll learn about cheese and spend time in the four cheese caves at Murray's, washing, brushing, and treating the various cheeses, all of which require different kinds of TLC to grow their molds properly.
While he was at Murray's for his interview, Mandel picked up a cheese-tasting book, similar to the logs toted by wine connoisseur, with pages to write down new cheeses tried and check off adjectives like chalky, floral and fudgy when sampling them.
"I'm going to fill out that little book of mine," Mandel said, especially during his participation in a cheese boot camp put on by Murray's, a class in which folks try dozens of cheeses and pairings.
Mandel, who wants to be a chef, said his interest in cheese extends beyond just the sensory.
"It kind of evokes a different way of looking at specifically food, but in a broader sense, the world in general," Mandel said.
The interesting thing about cheese, according to Mandel, is in the kitchen it is an ingredient, but to a cheese maker it is a product, full of salt, milk, sometimes even wine or brandy, with each of those ingredients coming about through its own process.
Working with the cheese mongers at Murray's and helping to cultivate cheese himself will benefit him in the future to understand what pairs well with what, Gabe said.
"The thing that it shows for me is there's more steps to cooking than what you see in the kitchen. There's things outside of the definition of classically trained chefs because it's seen from the perspective of the people that produce it," Mandel said. "You look at the world not in the sum of its parts but in processes."
