073 Say Cheese Preview with Dee and Danielle

We explore how GoodTaste! Pittsburgh and Nosh and Curd are bringing new flavors and experiences to local food lovers through events, cheese education, and creative pairings. We're on location at Mazzotta Winery where our guests share their journeys from personal passion to business success in Pittsburgh's vibrant culinary community.

• Dee Weinberg of GoodTaste! Pittsburgh has been creating food events for over a decade, focusing on "foods that people love and nobody's celebrating"
• Dee's upcoming Say Cheese event on October 5th, 2025 will showcase savory, sweet, hard, soft, domestic, and international cheeses
• GoodTaste! Pittsburgh also runs Pizza Fest and Bake It events with educational components and support for new businesses
• Danielle Doebereiner started Nosh and Curd after discovering a cheese book, building on her childhood love of melted cheese
• Nosh and Curd offers a cheese shop, coffee, workshops, and catering services within a 60-mile radius
• At the Say Cheese preview, guests experienced raclette stations, wine pairings, and creative cheese applications
• Foodie friends unanimously chose the interactive raclette experience as their favorite bite of the event

Say Cheese by Good Taste Pittsburgh is happening Sunday, October 5th, 2025. Tickets are available now at www.goodtastepittsburgh.com.

Chapters

• 1:14 Meet GoodTaste! Pittsburgh
• 6:37 Nosh and Curd's Cheese Journey
• 12:13 Say Cheese Preview Experience

Transcript

Doug: 0:01

Welcome to The Pittsburgh Dish. I'm your host, Doug Heilman. When you want to promote small businesses and drive locals to new tastes and flavors, what do you do? Well, create the experience. This week we talk with Dee Weinberg of Good Taste Pittsburgh. How does a good book and a childhood snack launch a career in cheese? Danielle Doebereiner shares the origin of nosh and curd. We're on location this week at Mazzotta Winery in Gibsonia trying new cheese and wine pairings along with Dee and Danielle, and we check in with a few more foodie friends to see what's tasty. All that ahead, stay tuned. The Pittsburgh Dish is supported by Family Table mom-inspired chef-prepared meal delivery service. They're helping busy folks get back to the dinner table. You can see their weekly menu rotation at familytablepghcom and use code DISH20 to save on your first order. That's code D-I-S-H 20. Now on to the show. Hi there, hi, doug, would you introduce yourself to our listeners and the name of your business? Sure.

Dee: 1:21

Hi everyone, I'm Dee Weinberg and my business is Good Taste Pittsburgh.

Doug: 1:26

And Dee, tell us a little bit more about what is Good Taste Pittsburgh, and what do you have going on right now in the world of food?

Dee: 1:35

Good Taste Pittsburgh has been doing food events for over a decade in the Pittsburgh area and we'd like to say that we help to build the food scene here in western Pennsylvania. We try to focus on foods that people love and nobody's celebrating them. For instance, our show coming up on October 5th is Say Cheese. Pittsburghers love cheese. We have a million farms around here. It's just a local food really, but at Say Cheese people will be able to taste savory, sweet, hard, soft, domestic, international. So we're trying to give people just a little bit of the cheese flavor at Say Cheese.

Doug: 2:24

And I think about all of these, I want to say festivals or events that you do Over the years. You have been introducing people to new tastes and flavors. Now, for this whole time that you've been doing, good Taste Pittsburgh.

Dee: 2:37

Yes.

Doug: 2:37

What are some of the other events you do throughout the year? I have been to a couple, but I bet our listeners don't know that you're connected to so many of them.

Dee: 2:44

I have been to a couple, but I bet our listeners don't know that you're connected to so many of them. Probably one of our hallmarks right now is Pizza Fest, which we each year pair with a brewery. There's no better marriage than pizza and beer, and that's usually the first Sunday in June.

Doug: 3:01

And that was at Doe Daddy Beer this year.

Dee: 3:04

It was a great space for that. It was a fabulous space and we're sort of thinking we may go back to that space. It hasn't been announced yet, but we're thinking about that.

Doug: 3:14

Well, Nick and Angie are great partners.

Dee: 3:15

Yes, they are, they're fabulous and their entire family is in on their business also, so it's great.

Marla: 3:21

I love that.

Dee: 3:29

And then in March we do a show called Bake it and Bake it sort of popped up out of the pandemic.

Dee: 3:32

We know that yeast was harder to get, I like to say, than crack. And we came out of the pandemic and people were still home cooking and baking and nobody was celebrating that. So we developed this event, this show, called Bake it. We're in our third year and it will be at the Monroeville Convention Center and we bring in a national chef who's known for baking. We do workshops, we have local and national vendors. It's just a fun day, sweet, sweet, sweet day.

Doug: 4:10

This was the first time that you and I worked together, because you asked me to do a air fryer baking demonstration and I had been playing around with a new air fryer and I thought it was an amazing event, but I really didn't know what I was doing at first, so thank you so much for giving me that opportunity.

Dee: 4:29

Well, and that really cemented this relationship that we have, which I'm very thankful for. That really was just one day I had opened up my air fryer right out of the box and with the recipe book book, and there was nothing in there that was sweet right and I thought somebody needs to develop that, and that's when the phone call happened yeah, thank you so much.

Doug: 4:54

And so I did a little research and I will say, like, pop out of the cylinder. Cinnamon rolls work really well, but I think I developed a cookie a cookie?

Dee: 5:02

yes, white cake. Yeah, you can do stuff in the air fryer. Yes, you can, you can, which is great. Thank you for that.

Doug: 5:08

Well, dee, thank you so much for all you're doing for Pittsburgh and for the region. You're really introducing folks to new flavors, as well as what you said with local businesses and connecting us to what's going on with so many great people and places. You are bringing experience so people can come to something and actually sink their teeth into it, instead of just scrolling through on social media and saying I might go Exactly.

Dee: 5:36

We're very proud of that. We're really proud of the fact that all of our shows have some kind of educational component, experiential component, excitement, yeah. And then we love introducing all of the new businesses that are popping up every day. That's really our forte in our shows.

Doug: 5:56

Well, thank you so much for that. Now, dee, if people are interested in finding out more about Good Taste Pittsburgh or the next event, say Cheese where can they go? Can you remind us of your social handles or your website?

Dee: 6:10

Our website is goodtastepittsburghcom and our socials are goodtastepgh.

Doug: 6:17

Excellent, Dee. Thanks so much again for your time and thanks for being on the Pittsburgh Dish.

Dee: 6:23

Thanks, Doug. Thank you so much for everything. I really appreciate it. Hi, this is Dee Weinberg with Good Taste Pittsburgh, and you're listening to The Pittsburgh Dish

Dee: 6:34

how are you doing today?

Danielle: 6:36

I'm well. How are you?

Doug: 6:38

I'm great. Would you introduce yourself to our listeners and what you have going on in the world of food?

Danielle: 6:44

Yes, of course, my name is Danielle Doebe reiner. I am the owner and founder of Nosh and Curd and we have a cheese store in Mars, Pennsylvania.

Doug: 6:53

It's the cutest looking store. Thank you, thank you so much.

Danielle: 6:57

So we have fun playing around with all different kinds of pairings and combinations. It's kind of our specialty and we just love to get in there and Go for it, and sometimes it works out. Sometimes it doesn't, but when it does it's magical.

Doug: 7:13

Danielle, you and I have met before at a couple of other events KDKA, through some events like this that we're at tonight and I also know that you, although you're in the world of pairing and selling cheese, you're friends with some other cheese forward folks like Megan McGinnis, the cheese queen.

Danielle: 7:30

Love Megan we were actually just conversing this morning, so absolutely love her and love supporting her business and she is so supportive of mine as well.

Doug: 7:39

I think that's what really heartens me is to see what folks might see as competitors, but you're really almost like the closest of friends because you're collaborating on what are you doing or what's going on in your next event. And so tell folks a little bit more about Nosh and Curd so folks can come visit your location.

Danielle: 7:57

Yes, we do everything from. We have a coffee shop so we do coffee. Specialty drinks, breakfast, lunch Everything is very cheese focused of course. But we do have some non-cheese options for those who don't care for cheese Of course Some folks just can't yes, True too, but we usually have something for them as well, and we even have vegan cheeses as well. So we carry a lot in store. We do workshops, so anything from teaching how to go to charcuterie board over to pairing wines and cheeses and what goes well together and why.

Doug: 8:32

And so when you mention those workshops, can people sort of sign up and maybe bring a group or do a party. Do you offer services like that?

Danielle: 8:40

Yeah, we offer classes to the public, of course, and then we also offer private events. So if you have a group of eight or more, we're happy to accommodate those, whether they're in the shop or offsite.

Doug: 8:51

Oh, I love that, and we're at a preview event for Say Cheese. Do you do catering and other offsite events like this?

Danielle: 9:00

We do so anything from small baby showers all the way up to a 300 person wedding. We travel up to about 60 mile radius for catering, so that's been great for us as well. But yeah, it's always fun because we get to customize it to whoever's liking is hosting the event.

Doug: 9:19

I love that. How long has Nosh and Curd been in business?

Danielle: 9:25

So we have officially been in our building for a little over three years Congratulations, thank you. But I started about nine months before that, so going on almost four years in business as a whole, and it's definitely been a learning experience. I've learned much more in the last four years than any other work experience could have prepared me, but I am passionate about it and love it and have met some great, great people like yourself through the business.

Doug: 9:53

Danielle, where did this passion start, this love of cheese and this decision to go into this business?

Danielle: 9:59

Honestly, by picking up a book about cheese. Yes, so I used to work for a home builder in the area and they have all of their homes fabulously decorated and they had a cheese book in one of the kitchens and I picked it up and started flipping through it and was very intrigued and that's kind of where the passion started and it's gone from there.

Doug: 10:20

Did you like cheese growing up, like as a youngster, or is this something you have grown into?

Danielle: 10:25

Not gonna lie, I would take Colby Jack cheese, pop it in the microwave for like 60 seconds until it got nice and bubbly and somewhat crispy and just down like a whole block.

Doug: 10:37

There was your cheese connoisseur path from a very young age, yeah, so my palate has expanded a lot. I love it. Now I'm looking at some tables. You have some cheeses set up and looks like some other little fun nibbles. What are we doing tonight?

Danielle: 10:50

So, like I said, it's all about the pairings and we like to expand your world and knowledge of cheese. So we've got a raclette station.

Doug: 10:58

So the raclette, that's where you put a little bit of cheese near some heat and it gets all nice and melty, is that right?

Danielle: 11:04

Yeah, normally you would do it with a whole wheel or even a half wheel of raclette and you would have a heating mechanism, kind of like a broiler in an oven, and that broils the cheese enough to where you can scrape off, just enough to make everything all cheesy. Tonight we have a different kind of raclette machine, which is where we're basically broiling smaller slices just for safety and everything. But the cheese queen, Megan, will be at the show with an authentic raclette machine.

Doug: 11:35

There's nothing better than melty gooey cheese.

Danielle: 11:38

And I also love when it gets a little crispy back to your childhood snack.

Doug: 11:41

So good, danielle. Just remind folks again if they're interested in visiting your shop, what's your location and maybe what your website and social handles are.

Danielle: 11:51

Yeah, sure. So we are on Grand Avenue in Mars, downtown Mars, right by the post office. If you're looking for a landmark, social is at Nosh and Curd, and then our website is noshandcurdcom, and our hours are Tuesday through Saturday, nine to four.

Doug: 12:07

I love it. Thanks so much.

Danielle: 12:09

Thank you so much for your time. Doug, thanks for being on the Pittsburgh Dish, thank you.

Doug: 12:13

During our Say Cheese preview event, danielle showed us how to make mini charcuterie boards that topped a wine glass so cute. She created s'mores using traditional ingredients with the addition of a soft ripened goat cheese, and we all turned up the heat on melty alpine raclette. So let's check in with some of our foodie friends and ask what were some of their best bites. So, hey, everybody, we're with Rebecca Hansborough. Rebecca, remind us the handle you go by on Instagram.

Rebecca: 12:45

Yes, I am the 41Chew instead of two, chew, 41chew.

Doug: 12:50

I love it. We talked earlier this year on the show.

Rebecca: 12:52

Yes, yes, it's very nice to see you again, you too.

Doug: 12:55

And since then you've gotten married. You guys have gone on your vacation. I heard you had a ton of great food.

Rebecca: 12:59

Yes, I had an amazing time in Barcelona and Vienna. I had all the tapas, and so tonight that we're at this event having more wine and more cheese, it's just taking me back to vacation. It's great.

Doug: 13:11

How great.

Rebecca: 13:12

Well, we did try several cheeses. Yes, we did.

Doug: 13:15

And I usually say what was the best bite you've had this week? What's the best bite you've had tonight? What was your favorite cheese?

Rebecca: 13:21

So my favorite was the raclette and it was like extra cool because I had this like kind of like mini hibachi, the raclette maker for the raclette cheese. So that was definitely my favorite part.

Doug: 13:33

I have to agree with you.

Doug: 13:34

It was delicious, you kind of slide it off of this little dish. Yeah, and she had cooked potatoes. Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca: 13:41

And for mine I did a grilled toast.

Doug: 13:45

Oh yes.

Rebecca: 13:45

And then I put prosciutto, and then I put a little piece of chorizo with a pickle with cheese on top and it made a very nice bite. And then they paired it with a raspberry wine, so you had the sweetness of the wine and the super, super saltiness of the bite, and it worked together very well.

Doug: 14:03

Lovely. Well, you did more than I did. I literally ate the cheese and the bread, but it was probably my favorite.

Rebecca: 14:08

I cooked a whole meal. You did.

Doug: 14:11

Rebecca, thank you so much for.

Rebecca: 14:16

Hi Hi.

Doug: 14:18

Would you introduce yourself and that handle you go by on Instagram.

Marla: 14:21

Yes, so I'm Marla and my IG handle is I'd rather be eating. We've eaten together several times we have.

Doug: 14:28

What was the best bite you had tonight?

Marla: 14:30

Everything was delicious but I have to say my favorite part of tonight was actually cutting the cheese. We had some té de moi I'm probably butchering the name of that she just told me like seven times how to say it.

Doug: 14:44

This is this round cheese right. And she had like this little apparatus that spun and we made these like fun rosettes yes, that was my favorite part.

Marla: 14:52

I feel like I got a little arm workout. Spinning the, spinning the drool, I think girl yeah, we're gonna have to ask.

Doug: 15:00

We're gonna have to ask her again. She's told me seven times again.

Marla: 15:03

but um, I liked how it just looks. So pretty, so good Can never go wrong.

Doug: 15:07

Thank you so much, you're so welcome, thank you. Hi how you doing.

Morgan: 15:12

Hi, I'm doing great. How are you?

Doug: 15:13

I'm great. Would you introduce yourself to our listeners and the name you go by on Instagram?

Morgan: 15:19

Yes, I am Morgan and it's Pittsburgh. Morgan, I love that Very original on Instagram. It works, morgan.

Doug: 15:26

I've seen you at a couple different food events. We were at Jimmy Wan's together last time yes, one of my faves and tonight we're at this cheese event for Say Cheese.

Morgan: 15:33

Yep.

Doug: 15:34

What was your best bite that you had tonight?

Morgan: 15:36

Okay, this is a bit of a tongue twister, but I night okay, this is a bit of a tongue twister, but I enjoyed the raclette cheese. Oh yes, that you raclette on the raclette little machine grill thing, that is right, which makes it very, um, very crispy, and you put it on top of things. I liked it on the bread and the prosciutto with a little pickle. It all tied together very well so more ooey gooey goodness. Perfection. Yes, can't get better than that.

Doug: 16:04

It was a clear winner. I mean, there were some other good cheeses tonight, but everyone loved that one.

Morgan: 16:08

Yes, it was really good.

Doug: 16:10

Morgan, thanks so much and thanks for being on The Pittsburgh Dish.

Morgan: 16:12

Thanks for having me.

Shayla: 16:14

Me, me, me Hi there.

Doug: 16:17

Hi, doug, would you introduce yourself? You're a friend of the show You've been on before.

Shayla: 16:21

Yes, I have. You're my friend, doug. I am Shayla Penn with Burgh Eats and Treats Facebook and Instagram.

Doug: 16:29

Yes, you know, Shayla, I always have an ending question for everyone which is what was their favorite dish of the week. But tonight, what was your best bite of this event this evening?

Shayla: 16:42

I say, I had to do a little mishmash of everything so I liked the raclette with the tetamon cheese twirl oh yes and I had to fit everything on one fork bite. So so you put two cheeses two che bite A veg, which is the cauliflower, a little bit of purple potato and prosciutto. All on one bite, the perfect bite, the perfect bite Shayla.

Doug: 17:09

thank you so much. Thank you, Thanks for being on the.

Shayla: 17:11

Pittsburgh Dish. I love The Pittsburgh Dish.

Doug: 17:16

Say Cheese by Good Taste Pittsburgh is happening Sunday, October 5th 2025. Tickets are available now at their website, goodtastepittsburghcom. If you enjoyed the show, consider buying us a coffee for this episode or supporting the show monthly. You can find links to those options at the bottom of our show description, and if you want to follow my own food adventures, you can find me on social media at Doug Cooking. That's our show for this week. Thanks again to all of our guests and contributors and to Kevin Solecki of Carnegie Accordion Company for providing the music to our show. We'll be back again next week with another fresh episode. Stay tuned.