KSDK -- Courtney in St. Peters asked NewsChannel 5's Heidi Glaus to find out what exactly is Provel cheese in this week's Hey Heidi! segment.
Heidi went to The Hill to find out.
The neighborhood name is due to it's proximity to the highest point of the city, but The Hill is probably best known for it's food.And when you're talking about picking up the Italian essentials, not much can stack up to DiGregorio's."We have regular customers that come from within a 200 mile radius," explains John DiGregorio.They come for stuff you just can't find anywhere else, stuff like that infamous provel cheese."It's a combination of cheddar, swiss, provolone cheese and naturally because you're mixing the three of them together you're processing a cheese so now if you have a processed cheese you can no longer consider it a real cheese, but it's made of all real cheeses," DiGregorio explains.It's a cheese that might take a little getting used to."Just Saturday we had someone come in and say, oh we ate your pizzas down here and we don't like it," DiGregorio tells me.However, it did in deed, originated here in St. Louis."For the most part, it's a St. Louis item that the Imo family started using on their product that grew and grew and now a lot of the other pizza places around town use it as well," DiGregorio explains.The DiGregoria family doesn't make provel cheese, but these days they do package their own specialty bread crumbs."This is my mom's recipe we have parmesan cheese and romano mixed into it," explains Toni Ribaudo.They even have a warehouse where they do their own sauces and sausages and offer a family recipe once a month.So DiGregorio's isn't your average grocery store, it's above and beyond and has plenty of provel cheese.a href="http://www.ksdk.com/life/programming/local/tisl/hey_heidi/default.aspx" class="ApplyClass" target="_blank">strong>Click here to submit a Hey Heidi! question or to upload a video./a>/>
