Cheesemonster Studio coming to Kennedy Street

713 Kennedy Street, NW

Thanks to Eric and Jeff for sending. The liquor license placard for Cheesemonster Studio says:

“New Restaurant specializing in creative cheeseboards with accompaniments such as cured meats, nuts, pickled vegetables and sweets. Will also have an array of light fare appetizers available. Cheese classes and wine tastings will be held. Sidewalk Café with 10 seats. Total Occupancy Load is 15 with seating for 14. Requesting an Entertainment Endorsement to provide live entertainment inside the premises only.”

Right next door to ANXO:

711 Kennedy Street, NW

From one of the owners:

“Just to get you up to speed on what Cheesemonster is, I started it as a mobile, private cheesemongering company about a year and a half ago. Basically, what that means is that I do two main things: cheese catering (big, crazy cheeseboards for events), and mobile cheese education (cheese 101 classes, cheese and beverage pairings classes, how-to-build-a-cheeseboard classes, etc.). I’ve been lucky enough to team up with some fantastic bars, restaurants, and distilleries around town, which is how I met Hilarey. We started talking about working together on a Cheesemonster brick-and-mortar space last winter, and we just signed a lease on a space on Kennedy street last month.

Rather than a traditional retail shop, it is going to be a cheese studio space (hence the name, Cheesemonster Studio). Basically what that means is that it is going to be a base of operations for the catering side of the business that can double as an event space for classes and private events. It will also allow us to expand into other products and services like cheeseboards to go/for delivery, mail order cheese collections. Hilarey will be in charge of the wine and beer program, which will offer service for catered events as well as by-the-glass options for events at the studio.

My pie-in-the-sky dream for the space is for it to become a hub for cheese professionals to be able to deep dive into specific aspects of cheesemongering that they feel passionately about. If they love teaching classes and spreading the word about aspects of the cheese world they find fascinating, they can do that. If they love plating and making things look gorgeous and creative, they can do that. Basically, I’d love for DC to become a place where good mongers come and stay – far too often we get great people who leave after a year or two because of the lack of cheese-related opportunities, and that, quite frankly, sucks.”

Sounds very cool, STAY TUNED.