The Sandwich Scandal at the Heart of the World’s Greatest Golfing Event - The Masters has it all—except its missing original pimento cheese recipe.
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For a seemingly simple snack, the Masters pimento cheese sandwich has attracted no shortage of drama.
As a veteran sports journalist, Scott Michaux has attended Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA tournaments, and just about every golf tournament under the sun. “The Masters is the best presented event in the history of sports,” he says. “You can’t argue that.” The Masters is one of the four major professional golf championships, where the world’s top 100 golfers converge on Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, to compete for the coveted Green Jacket (and, this year, a cool $11.5 million). What sets the Masters apart, however, is a behind-the-scenes devotion to aesthetic perfection that evokes from its regular patrons a near-religious fervor.
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The greatest event in sports history is missing a vital recipe: that of its original pimento cheese sandwich. The problem began more than 20 years ago, when the Masters chose not to renew the contract for the tournament’s longtime pimento cheese vendor, Nick Rangos. Afterward, the caterer refused to share his private recipe, taking its secret to his grave in 2015. Although Ted Godfrey, Rangos’s replacement, worked tirelessly to approximate the original masterpiece, he also withheld his recipe after the Masters replaced him with in-house catering in 2013. Rangos’s surviving family did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Godfrey or the Masters’ press team. What we do have, however, is a lifelong Masters patron and Augusta food blogger who wasn’t above reverse-engineering the ingredients list from the back of the wrapper in 2016. It’s an imitation of an imitation of an approximation—but until a Rangos relative starts sharing, it’s the closest thing out there.
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...heese-sandwich