I’m an Italian who grew up on the Jersey Shore. And no, don’t ask, I don’t know Snooki.

Mayonnaise was not a big part of my life growing up. It belonged in tuna salad and potato salad, but that’s about it. The best sandwiches were on sub rolls, and you don’t put mayo on a sub roll. Oil and vinegar please, that’s all you need. It wasn’t until I came down south for college in Virginia that I learned about an entire region of the country’s infatuation with mayo.

And the fact that they could take mayo, mix it with cheese, put it on plain white bread, and call that a sandwich? What is that? So as you can imagine, for years I had absolutely no use for pimento cheese. Many people (especially my wife’s grandmother) told me, “Oh, well you just haven’t had my pimento cheese.” And I’d always try it, just to be polite. But believe me, I didn’t need anybody’s pimento cheese. Pimento cheese was not something that I ever asked for. It wasn’t something that I ever wanted and not something that I could fathom eating at all. Until I went to The Masters.

After years of futility in the ticket lottery, I finally hit the jackpot in 2014 and won four tickets to the Wednesday practice Round. And I felt like I just had to try the pimento cheese.

I just had to try it; there was no way that I was going to go to The Masters and not try their much-vaunted pimento cheese sandwich. I wasn’t going to get away without it, If for no other reason than just to be able to tell everybody who’d been on my case for decades that no, I JUST DON’T LIKE ANY PIMENTO CHEESE. Yours isn’t any better. It isn’t any worse. I just don’t like it. So please, for the love of all that’s holy, just miss me with it. Well, I don’t know if it was just being at Augusta National, or being there with my dad, my wife and my oldest daughter or what. But sitting there in the grandstand on 12, baking in the sun, drinking that very reasonably priced beer and and watching groups come through in the Wednesday practice round, but honestly, that pimento cheese was just absolutely sublime. I had to completely rethink my position on pimento cheese. I had to reconsider several previously held positions. But from that day on, I realized that, at least at Augusta National, pimento cheese really is that good. And that maybe, just maybe, these southerners were on to something. You know, it’s never too late for an old dog, Trix.

So with that, I figured that if I can give Augusta National’s pimento cheese a try, I’ve got to try my mother in law’s as well (to her great credit, she never pushed it on me, never bugged me about it). And so I did give it a shot. And you know what? It wasn’t just good. It was actually just a little bit better than what I’d had at The Masters.

After that, I tried pimento cheese at plenty of other places. Homemade. Pre-made. I tried it all. I had to give it all a chance. And most of it, quite frankly, is trash. There was a restaurant here in Richmond, Pasture, which I miss very much, and they had great pimento cheese, but unfortunately they’re no longer with us. So with that, I’m going to give you Mike Eovino’s Pimento Cheese Power Rankings.

• Coming in hot at number five is Birdie’s pimento cheese, hailing from tiny little South Hill, Virginia. It’s the only premade pimento cheese I’ve tried that’s actually halfway decent. It’s probably what we’ll be eating this weekend.
• At number four; this is going to surprise you. It’s Augusta National’s pimento cheese sandwich. It’s great. It’s fantastic. I love it. I would eat it again in a heartbeat. But yes, it only comes in at number four.
• In the number three spot is my mother-in-law, Kathy Queen’s pimento cheese. Yes. Again, my mother-in-law’s pimento cheese is just a little bit better than Augusta National’s. I’m not just saying this to score points with her. She thought the world of me when I thought all pimento cheese was gross.
• Coming in at number two, we have Kathy Queen’s pimento cheese on a ham roll. I think I blew my mother-in-law’s mind when I took one of her country ham rolls, opened it up, and spread pimento cheese on it. It was a game changing experience.
• And in the top spot (drumroll please!), it’s a clean sweep of the podium for my mother-in-law. It’s Kathy Queen’s pimento cheese with jalapenos. I’m the only one in the family who likes this and she makes it special for me (told you she loves me). I’ll tell you what, that bite of the jalapeno cutting through all that cheese and all that mayo it’s next level.

So congratulations mom, your pimento cheese in three different formats takes my top three spots. And yes, I am a convert now. Maybe I’m even a southerner now, but I can say that this stuff is pretty great. If you’ve never had it, and you’re at Augusta National, you gotta give it a try. You might just find that there’s something new out there for you.

By Mike Eovino