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To Nicastro, the arrival of the Big Cheese is almost routine, an annual store tradition since the 1980s. But to LoFrisco, the journey to find the same provolone of his childhood was a long time in the making. Growing up as a kid in Brooklyn, New York, during the Second World War, it was impossible to get cheese imported from Italy.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen

“Once a store depleted its inventory, that was it for the duration of the war,” LoFrisco, 82, writes in a chapter of The LoFrisco Family Cookbook: How Josie Brought Sicily to Brooklyn, which will be released in the spring.

But shortly after the war ended, DePalo’s – a local Italian grocer no longer in existence – received a hulking, 1,000-pound provolone that captured the attention of the whole neighbourhood.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen

During a game of stickball near LoFrisco’s home, a child came sprinting down the street to announce DePalo’s had “just got the biggest cheese in the world,” said LoFrisco. Everyone stopped what they were doing and ran to the store.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen

Inside, it was crowded, word having spread. Outside, people craned to get a good look at the cheese, which was still in its twelve-foot-by-three-foot crate.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen

LoFrisco returned the next day for the big reveal. Unveiled, the massive cheese sat in one long cylindrical log, preserved in wax and wrapped with rope, unlike anything LoFrisco had ever seen.

It became an instant topic of conversation in the neighbourhood.

“The cheese just made an enormous impression for me because we hadn’t had any cheese during the war,” said LoFrisco, who glowed when Nicastro gave him “the honour” of making the first cut into the cheese on Tuesday. “To see it now is almost like a dream come true. It’s something I never expected to see in my life.”