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Angelo's Pizzeria
South PhillyCheesesteaks with Eagles star Cooper DeJean and Cooper Sharp, Pennsylvania's own melty American cheese and a Philly staple since 1918.
×America's dairy farmers×America's dairy farmersEmilia + Tommy Hit the Road
Who's laughing now?
Cheese in the Americas has been something of a joke to the rest of the world… until last year, when American Emilia D'Albero was crowned the world's best cheesemonger. In American Cheese, Emilia hits the road with fiancé and fellow champion Tommy Amorim to show the world that cheesemakers from this hemisphere mean business.
What we'd make, and who it follows.
American Cheese is an eight-episode, half-hour docuseries that follows the most respected couple in American cheese on a road trip across North America. In 2025, Emilia D'Albero became the first American ever crowned the world's best cheesemonger at the Mondial du Fromage in France. Her fiancé, Tommy Amorim, is a champion himself, the 2021 Cheesemonger Invitational winner. Each episode drops them into a new region and follows the milk from start to finish: the farmer before sunrise, the maker in the cave, the bar, festival or kitchen where it all lands. Every stop pairs high brow with low brow, so a Michelin-starred tasting sits beside a cheesesteak counter and an aging cellar beside a county fair. Along the way they find the immigrant families, small farms and unlikely innovators behind the best cheese being made in the Western Hemisphere. But the show isn't only about how dairy is farmed or cheese is made. It's about the people who work tirelessly behind it, and how they unwind with family and friends after long days: a slice of America that's often overlooked, but full of life and celebration. The pilot is Pennsylvania, where the people, places and story are already lined up.
Streaming now accounts for 49% of all TV viewing in the U.S., more than broadcast and cable combined, and unscripted series are breaking into streaming's most-watched lists for the first time. Food and travel are proven formats, but American Cheese adds what most food shows lack: an underdog story with real stakes, two hosts with genuine chemistry and credentials, and a country the rest of the world still underestimates. Each 30-minute episode is built in chapters, so it cuts cleanly into shorts, farmer profiles and recipe moments for social, schools and farmer outreach long after it airs.
For America's dairy farmers, the series turns the stories they already fund into a show people choose to watch. Dairy promotion groups across the country already pay for farmer profiles, mini-documentaries and TV partnerships. American Cheese gathers that work into one series with world-champion hosts and a path to streaming buyers, and each state keeps the farmer cuts for its own channels. The team behind it has done this before: Philamedia's Brandon Gulish directed and co-executive produced Dangerous Grounds for Travel Channel with La Colombe's Todd Carmichael, designing every episode with the people funding it. Off screen, Emilia and Tommy carry the show into state fairs, June Dairy Month events, school programs and farmer meetings. The country lost more than a thousand dairy farms last year. The people who carry this industry deserve to be seen.
First American to win the Mondial du Fromage.
“Americans have traditionally been the underdogs in the international cheese community.”
Emilia, on NPR's All Things Considered
Beat Emilia by four points the year they met. Now he's marrying her.
Smart, not precious. Funny, not a joke.
Emilia and Tommy spend their year on the road, at cheese festivals, competitions and fancy food shows around the world.
Now they're bringing an audience along for the ride.
Dairy farmers are the backbone of the industry. The show puts them, and the blue-collar crews around them, at the center.
4:30 AMMilker
7:00 AMHauler
11:00 AMFarmer
3:00 PMPlant crew
MidnightAffineurEight sample episodes, Oaxaca to Quebec. Tap one to read it.
The Italian Market, a 4 a.m. Lancaster County milk run, and Lancaster City, nicknamed America's refugee capital.
Cheesesteaks with Cooper DeJean. A cheese vending machine in Kensington, Philadelphia. Stone caves in Chester County. Then a Michelin-starred dinner, with a cheese course from the city's most inventive maker.
Cheesesteaks with Eagles star Cooper DeJean and Cooper Sharp, Pennsylvania's own melty American cheese and a Philly staple since 1918.
Israeli-born Yoav Perry makes cheese in a shipping container and sells it 24/7 from Philly's first cheese vending machine. Kensington is more than its headlines.
Wild flavors, long lines, zero pretension. Low brow, done perfectly.
St. Malachi, aged in stone caves, tied for second Best of Show at the 2016 American Cheese Society awards.
A dairy since 1981 and a World Cheese Awards silver medalist. Emilia and Tommy join Sue Miller and her family for a happy hour and picnic on the farm, with neighbors and produce from nearby farms.
A family dairy before sunrise: the milkers, the herd and the hauler who carries it to the plant. Pennsylvania has more dairy farms than any state but one.
Canelés from Market Day Canelé, a stop at the Birchrun Hills stand, and a bottle of wine for the dinner ahead.
Dinner with pastry chef Abigail at one of Philadelphia's first Michelin-starred restaurants, where every bit of dairy comes from local farms and cheesemakers: a cheese course built on Yoav's Madcap, and a cheesecake made with it.
Emilia and Tommy start at Angelo's with Cooper DeJean, arguing over cheesesteaks, accessible food and the best version of the melty American cheese everyone loves. Bellies full, they head to Perrystead Dairy in Kensington, a neighborhood long known for crime and the opioid crisis, and home to remarkable families and businesses. Then out to Chester County: The Farm at Doe Run and Birchrun Hills Farm, makers winning international recognition. A stop at 1-900-Ice-Cream, a 4 a.m. milk run on a Lancaster County family dairy, and a run through Headhouse Farmers Market for canelés, wine and cider. It ends at Provenance, where all the dairy comes from local farms and cheesemakers, sharing a meal with Abigail and Yoav. They take notes the whole way.
Why it works for America's dairy farmers.
You already pay to tell farmers' stories. American Cheese puts them in a series with two world champions and a path to streaming buyers, then hands you the cuts to use all year.
“Farmer voices are trusted.”
Corey Scott, president and CEO, Dairy Management Inc., October 2026
On Travel Channel's Dangerous Grounds, Philamedia's Brandon Gulish designed every episode with the people funding it. For a farmer board, the questions are:
American Cheese works the same way, with your board at the table.
★ Built for checkoff rulesGeneric dairy credit, no brand claims, no policy positions, and your team reviews cuts before release.
Emilia holds the world title until the next Mondial du Fromage.
U.S. dairy farms lost in 2025, leaving 23,609. The next generation is deciding now whether to stay.
The season-one slate already runs through regions that dairy farmers fund. Each one can own its episode. Together, they fund the season.
Also on the slate: Oaxaca, Mexico (03) and Warwick, Quebec (04). Territories follow Dairy Management Inc.'s directory of local checkoff organizations; striped states are split between two organizations.
Our team's series have aired on National Geographic, Disney+, Travel Channel, Food Network and FOX, filmed in 45+ countries. These are the rooms we'd take American Cheese into.
★ Home base: Philadelphia, inside ADA North East territory and 90 minutes from Lancaster County.
Episode 01 and the sizzleFunds the Pennsylvania pilot, which becomes episode 01, and the sizzle we take to streamers and networks. It also builds the format, look and music the whole season reuses. Credited as the founding funder.
Your state's episodeA half-hour episode set in your state and designed with your board, plus farmer profiles, short verticals and a classroom cut for your own channels. Join a coalition and the same episode is $85K.
Season one, sharedEach state funds its own episode, and together you fund the season. Wisconsin used a coalition in 2023, when six partners, Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin among them, put up $1.3M to bring Top Chef to the state.
Structured as generic dairy promotion: no brand claims, no policy positions, and your team reviews every cut before release.
Season one: North America. Then Italy, Switzerland, Australia. Emilia + Tommy become the franchise.
Respected in Europe. In love with cheese made right here.
Emilia was the kid who wrote about cheese in middle school when the assignment was to write about something she was thankful for. After college she joined Eataly in New York, running culinary events and education before moving behind the cheese counter. She entered her first Cheesemonger Invitational in 2018 and kept coming back. In 2021 she won the virtual CMI and took second at the in-person event, four points behind the man she'd go on to marry. In March 2025 she won CMI Masters, the title of America's best cheesemonger, and a seat on the first all-female Team USA.
After nearly a year of two-hour daily practice in tasting, cutting, plating and flashcards, she went to Tours, France, for the Mondial du Fromage in September 2025. Across nine challenges scored on a 200-point rubric, she beat 17 competitors from 14 countries and became the first American ever named the world's best cheesemonger. Her teammate Courtney Johnson took bronze, so two Americans stood on that podium together for the first time. Emilia now runs national sales and marketing for Formaticum, posts as @punkrockparmigiano, and makes a point of being the mentor she wanted when she was starting out. Her message is simple: good cheese belongs at every table, not just the fancy ones.
“Americans have traditionally been the underdogs in the international cheese community.”
Emilia D'Albero, NPR's All Things Considered
Cheese runs in Tommy's family. His grandfather, Giuseppe Abbruzzo, worked as a cheesemonger for 62 years, and since 2008 Tommy has followed him behind the counter. He studied English with a minor in poetry and worked in IT before he chose cheese. The moment it clicked was a taste of Constant Bliss, a soft cheese from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. He's been a lifer ever since, because of an American cheese. In 2021 he won the Cheesemonger Invitational at the Brooklyn Expo Center, the first Di Bruno Bros. monger ever to take the title, and edged out Emilia by four points the year they met.
Today he's Category Manager for Procurement and Education at Di Bruno Bros., Philadelphia's landmark Italian Market cheese shop. He chooses what goes in the case, runs after-hours events and trains the next generation of mongers. Culture magazine put him on its 2025 Hot List. He was part of Team USA's support crew for Emilia's Mondial win, and he's already been developing a cheese-pairing interview show of his own. He tells stories with flavor, and right now he's raving about Coppinger, an ash-lined washed-rind cheese from Sequatchie Cove Creamery in Tennessee. His goal is to give great small makers a bigger audience, and that happens to be this show's mission too.
“Her dedication to education and the industry challenges me to be a better cheesemonger.”
Tommy Amorim on Emilia, Culture 2025 Hot List
They walked in as outsiders and won a world title in France, after years of competition and travel through France, Italy and Switzerland. When they say an American cheese is world-class, the gatekeepers have to listen.
Tommy's turning point was a Vermont cheese. His current favorite is from Tennessee. Emilia calls American mongers the underdogs. Their own story is the case for the series.
Both are Certified Cheese Professionals who train mongers for a living, and both believe cheese is for everyone and every meal. They can go deep with a fifth-generation farmer and still keep a festival crowd laughing.
