Union Square in Manhattan is shaping up as the new go-to cheese district in New York City. Two new shops, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese and Bedford Cheese Shop, opened up recently.

Beecher’s, a hit in hometown Seattle, made its New York debut last June inside a landmark building at 20th and Broadway.

“It’s hard to imagine now, but artisan cheese was not even a term people talked about when we opened back home in 2003,” says Kurt Beecher Dammeier, Beecher’s 53-year-old founder. “Flash-forward to 2011, and the artisan cheese movement is raging. In a way, our first Seattle shop felt like a bigger risk than our 8,500-square-feet store in the middle of Manhattan."

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Photo by Vassil Tzvetanov