For almost a year, Emilia D’Albero trained like an athlete, heavy-lifting and sculpting till her hands ached. The Philly cheesemonger spent two hours a day tasting, cutting, and plating hundreds of pounds of cheese.
The training paid off on Sept. 15, when she won the Mondial du Fromage, one of the top cheese competitions in the world. Held over two days in Tours, France, the contest pits 18 mongers from 14 countries against each other over nine challenges that put their cheese knowledge, plating savvy, cutting chops, sensory skills, and pairing expertise to the test.
As the clock ticked down on the four-hour, five-challenge final round, all she could think about was cleaning up smudges and crumbles as she plated an intricate, nearly 40-inch display featuring several dozen varieties of cheese, from hulking wedges of Comte to small wheels of aged chevre.
“When the buzzer went off and I was done, I felt this incredible sense of relief knowing that I had given absolutely my best effort,” D’Albero said. “I had prepared as best I could and hoped that I had brought honor to American cheesemongers.”
In the end, the Point Breeze resident who goes by @punkrockparmigiano on TikTok won the gold — becoming the first American to do so.
To even get to the Mondial du Fromage, D’Albero had to win two other competitions over the past four years, besting roughly 50 American mongers along the way.
In summer 2021, she took first place a virtual, pandemic-era version the Cheesemonger Invitational, a national competition held in New York City every summer. She placed second at an in-person event held later that same year — meeting her now-partner and fellow cheesemonger Tommy Amorim of Di Bruno Bros., who edged her out for the top spot. (Philly-based mongers Jake Heller and Max Lazary have won CMI in 2024 and 2025, respectively.)
That made D’Albero eligible to compete in the Cheesemonger Invitational Masters; she faced off against 16 previous CMI winners for one of two spots on Team USA this past March. D’Albero and Seattle-based cheesemonger Courtney Johnson emerged victorious at CMI Masters, earning both a trip to France for last month’s Mondial du Fromage, also dubbed “the Olympics of cheese.”
There, D’Albero and Johnson made history as the U.S.’s first all-female team. Johnson won the bronze medal while D’Albero won the gold, trumping 18 competitors from 14 other countries. The two mongers are the first Americans to ever stand on the competition’s podium together.
Mondial’s jury, comprising top cheesemongers and other international professionals recognized for their expertise, evaluates the competitors’ performance on a 200-point rubric that measures their testing knowledge, visual quality, cutting, originality, and artistic quality.
“It is an honor, and it’s also incredibly humbling,” D’Albero said. “The main emotion that I have been feeling in the last couple of weeks is gratitude, because this was really a community effort.”
D’Albero and Johnson received lots of support from fellow Americans as they prepared for the competition: Cheesemakers and distributors from across the country sent pounds of cheese, accoutrements, and other items, and offered spaces in which to practice. In Philadelphia, Julia Fox-Birnbaum of Bella Vista’sPhilly Cheese School hosted Team USA’s last practice event in July. D’Albero sourced ingredients and tools from Italian Market staples like Di Bruno Bros., Cardenas, and Fante’s. She sourced glass pieces for her display from Rainbow Resellers, an area business she found at the local rovingPunk Rock Flea Market.
“I received hundreds of pounds of [free] cheese over the last six months, and that’s not an exaggeration,” D’Albero said. “So anything that I either didn’t use or that was given to me and I couldn’t use, I put into the South Philly community fridges.”
Out of the nine challenges, D’Albero’s final-round “cheese plateau” was her favorite to put together. To build it, she utilized certain elements to reference her friends, family, and others who helped her along the way. She borrowed a fish spatula from one of her mentors to transfer parmigiano frico from a baking sheet to cup molds. She incorporated her great grandmother’s espresso cups to hold bite-sized appetizers showcasing Stilton cheese. And the wrinkly-creamy French cow’s milk cheese known as Langres paid homage to a close friend.
“It was really the culmination of all of my work, not just from the past year, but from really my whole life,” D’Albero said. “It was really fulfilling to see that final presentation and know that it had been appreciated by so many people.”
After judging, D’Albero took home a gold medal and a giant check for 2,500 euros.
D’Albero isn’t currently employed at a local cheese shop — she works remotely doing sales and marketing for the cheese-equipment supplier Formaticum — but she expects to pop up for a few guest-mongering stints at Di Bruno Bros. counters during the holidays.
She sees a greater significance in her and Johnson’s wins on the world stage. “American cheesemongers are misunderstood, I think, by both the American public and Europeans,” she said. “And if there’s anything that this win helps contextualize is that cheesemongers are wonderful, hard-working, creative, capable people whose main goal is to foster the love of cheese.”