Peak American

New School American cheese is all nostalgia and no nonsense.

- Maddy Sweitzer-Lammé

CHEF ERIC GREENSPAN'S FAVORITE FOOD of all time is American cheese. "I've used American cheese my entire career," he says. "But most cheese is really more about texture than taste, and we thought it could be more than that."

When Greenspan was writing The Great Grilled Cheese Book in 2017, he started wondering why American cheese didn't get more attention from chefs. "They make burger buns from scratch, and they grind their own meat... I feel like there should be a way to close that circle of quality," he says. He mentioned the idea of an artisanal American cheese to his friend Alan Leavitt, a consumer packaged goods investor. Leavitt was immediately intrigued. In 2022, after five years of research and development, Greenspan and Leavitt launched New School American cheese, initially selling exclusively to restaurants.