About Steve:

•In early summer 2010, the name Steven Jenkins was added to the very select number of those in the Distinguished Service Hall Of Fame of the Consulate General of Italy and the Italian Trade Commission.

•In March of 2010, Jenkins was notified by the French Ministry Of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries that he was named Chevalier of the ‘Order of Agricultural Merit’.

•In July of 2008, Jenkins was honored with The Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Cheese Society. His latest book, The Food Life (Ecco/HarperCollins), was published earlier in the same month.

•Jenkins’ first book, Cheese Primer (Workman, 1996), decidedly a “chef-d’oeuvre”, is in its record-breaking eleventh printing. Cheese Primer won the James Beard Award, and is one of the most highly regarded books in the world of cheese for both professionals and amateurs.

•In 1980 he became the first American to be welcomed into France’s super-honorary society, Taste-Fromage.

•He was the first American cheesemonger inducted into France’s ancient and elite Guilde des Fromagers in 1976, and was recently elevated to “Prud’homme”, the guild’s highest status.

Variously described in print over the years as “New York’s highest-profile grocer” (New York Magazine), “the enfant terrible of the fancy food business” (The New York Times), and “the eminence grise of American cheesemongers” (The New Yorker), as well as having been featured in New York Magazine’s “The 100 Smartest New Yorkers” issue, he has worked at New York’s Fairway Market for most of his career.