Masters Wrap-Up: Golf Happened, Fans Lament Pimento Cheese Sandwiches

Pimento cheese is a beloved a staple of Southern cuisine, a heavenly amalgamation of grated sharp cheddar cheese, cream cheese, mayo, chopped pimentos, minced onion, Worcestershire, cayenne pepper and love. The Masters Tournament, an annual golf championship held in the hard-to-get-to locale of Augusta, Georgia, is a significantly less flavorful amalgamation, whose longtime official snack is a pimento cheese sandwich on white bread. Sold for $1.50 each, it's cheap enough to not invite questions as to whether it's good "standing around in the sun" food.

Last week, as the event reached literal octogenarian status, such questionable traditions as wearing green blazers, eating cheese and mayo while getting sunburned and playing golf were met with renewed protests. Okay, not the blazers or the golf, but ever since the tournament switched caterers in 2013 after 60 years of continuity, the official pimento cheese sandwich hasn't satisfied hankerings quite the same way.

The perfect pimento cheese sandwich still exists in Augusta, just not at the Masters. Prompted by this reality, Southern lifestyle magazine Garden and Gun compiled a list of local places where hungry golf enthusiasts can find the original recipe. In a town whose country club–esque airport's only discernible feature is a bronze statue of 1976 Tournament champion Ray Floyd, this is the kind of controversy that doesn't bow out quickly.