Primo Pimento

Even for super-chef Thomas Keller, it's not a matter of improving on ANGC's iconic sammie-just matching it

- Josh Sens

THE FIRST TIME HE ATTENDED THE MASTERS, nearly a decade ago, the renowned chef Thomas Keller did what any golf and food enthusiast would do: He wandered the grounds, eating up the atmosphere and savoring the beauty. Then he made a beeline for the concession stand.

Spoiler alert: He did not order a chicken biscuit.

“It’s the Masters,” Keller says. “You’ve got to go with the pimento cheese.”

Just as the salmon tartare cornet is a signature for Keller, the Michelin three-star man behind Per Se, in New York, and The French Laundry, in Northern California, the pimento-cheese sandwich is a staple across large swaths of the South. But no version is more famous than the one sold at the Masters, where a spread of gooey goodness squeezed between white bread fetches a scant $1.50.

Haute cuisine it isn’t. And that, Keller says, is the point.