When Crystal Spring Grocery Co. runs out of it, folks start to holler. When staff at Dogwood Restaurant bring out a burger or hot dog topped with it, the sight inspires five more orders. Caterer Drew Buzik’s orders typically include it, occasionally by the vat.
The delight in question is called cheese slaw, a snack with Roanoke roots. It’s textural kin to the better-known pimiento cheese. But this treat centers on Swiss, not cheddar. Banana and jalapeno peppers, not pimientos, provide the punch, with more bite coming via green onion.
“I like it — perfectly tangy, perfectly creamy, a little salty,” said Abby Epperly, who works front of house at Crystal Spring Grocery in South Roanoke. “I just think this needs to be a cheese slaw town.”
The sometime-condiment, sometime-side, sometime-charcuterie feature has a cult following beyond the Star City that publications including Southern Living occasionally pump up.
“Today, cheese slaw is still a fixture on holiday and party tables in Roanoke and many other places if a Roanoke ex-pat has something to say about it,” Anne Byrn wrote in 2025 for Southern Living.
One mystery to ponder is why it never was packaged, marketed and sold by the pallet in the same way as its oranger, blander cousin. (While we acknowledge that some companies have added jalapenos as an option, we’ve tasted neither banana pepper, brine nor green onion in any pimiento goo we’ve tried.)
Buzik, whose career includes a run as owner at the old Cafe Succotash in Vinton, said that day might come.
“I don’t think it was widely known outside of this area until about the last 10 years,” Buzik said. “I’d say there’s a huge opportunity being missed somewhere in that.”
Meanwhile, there are a scant few places to get your fix, and plenty of recipes floating around for those who want to make their own version of the stuff that a caterer named Lib Wilhelm started mixing in the mid-20th century.
Everyone who is serious about making and selling it gives a nod to the late Wilhelm, who was “caterer for the who’s who in Roanoke in the `60s and `70s,” Buzik said.
Tinnell’s Finer Foods, which opened in 1937 and stayed in business on Crystal Spring Avenue Southwest until 2019, packaged and sold its own version. Crystal Spring Grocery opened the next year in the Tinnell’s building.
Its owners opted to keep some Tinnell favorites, including ham biscuits and pimiento cheese, all with the same recipes, said Epperly, who started working there the year it opened.
“You know, people freak out if it’s gone,” she said of the cheese slaw.
Epperly prefers it, focusing on the banana peppers’ imparted tanginess. She recommends a charcuterie tray with Ritz crackers, bread-and-butter pickles and a sliced-up summer sausage.
Buzik, who made a load of the stuff for a family that was taking it to Smith Mountain Lake to be an edible part of its July 4 celebration, said that Wilhelm served hers inside a head of cabbage hollowed out as a bowl. There was no cabbage in her “slaw,” but there was slaw in the cabbage.
“As a toddler, I remember being at wedding receptions that I believe Lib must have catered, because I recall seeing that hollowed out head of cabbage on the table with this luscious, savory cheese dip in it, and it did contain carrots, from my memory.”
Buzik is possibly the only one making it who keeps shredded carrots in the recipe. The root veggies’ colors likely served to make it look more like its half-namesake, he said. No one is bothering with the hollowed-out cabbage head.
“I think the original version is shredded Swiss cheese, shredded carrot, sliced green onions, chopped jalapeno peppers, chopped mild banana peppers and mayonnaise,” he said. “That’s all I put in mine, and my intention was to be true to the original. That’s what I have seen in print, although I’ve seen a lot of more recent versions of it that omit the carrot.”
It has been a beloved topping for burgers and dogs, as well. Fork in the Alley — and, later, sister establishment Fork in the Market — got Tinnell’s permission to use its recipes and included both the slaw and the pimiento versions on burgers. Cheese slaw topped the iconic Astro Dog, which married it with New Orleans-style olive relish and dijon mustard on a Washington, D.C.-famous half-smoke sausage.
“That was just from childhood memories of really good food that stuck with me,” former Forks’ owner David Trinkle said. He and his chefs developed the idea for that entree and others from food he loved growing up in Roanoke and during college in Charlottesville, he said.
Trinkle and his wife, Ann, sold Fork in the Alley in 2025, and with new owners came a new menu, sans Astro Dog. The couple sold Fork in the Market in June, but the mega-savory half-smoke combination may well make occasional guest-starring appearances there, said new owner Brandon Blevins.
It was a popular item, but with food costs rising, Blevins needed to pare down. Hot smokes went on just two dog offerings, and olive relish was an Astro-only ingredient, he said.
“It was more of a menu maintenance thing, and trying to cut down on food costs rather than due to its lack of popularity,” said Blevins, a longtime employee who was general manager there before he bought the downtown Roanoke dive bar.
He added: “We are doing different special menus each month, so you could keep an eye out, and it may make an appearance here in the future.”
About three miles east of the City Market Building, downtown Vinton’s Dogwood Restaurant has featured cheese slaw-topped burgers and dogs for about a decade, said Dogwood’s front-of-house manager, Jessica Blankenship.
The Big Lick Burger and the Scooby Dog are topped with a version that includes chopped red peppers.
“We make it fresh, and, say if I made it today, I will probably be sold out by tomorrow. It’s probably 3 pounds we make at a time,” Blankenship said. “It goes really quick.”
The burger features tomato and mayo with the Swiss mix, and the hot dog pairs with house-made chili.
“As soon as one person sees it, we will probably sell five more right after,” she said.
To Buzik, pimiento cheese is “near and dear to people’s hearts,” but making it so much over the decades became tiring, “to put it kindly,” he said. He played around and created a white cheddar version with jalapeno and banana peppers.
“And then I remembered … that the cheese slaw, even though it’s not pimento cheese, was very popular in Roanoke at one time, and I put it on the menu a few times, and lo and behold, it sells like crazy.”
Here is Buzik’s recipe, faithful to the one Wilhelm made famous and guaranteed to disappear quickly from its delivery module, be it hollowed-out cabbage, buttery-and-salty cracker or sandwich.
Star City Cheese Slaw
Makes about 1 quart
16-ounce block Swiss cheese, coarsely grated
1 small carrot, peeled and coarsely grated
3 scallions, green tops thinly sliced (reserve the white bulbs for another use)
1/2 small jar of mild sliced banana peppers, roughly chopped
1/2 to 1 whole fresh jalapeños, seeded and finely minced (use as much as you enjoy)
2-3 Tbs. brine from the jarred banana peppers
Duke’s mayonnaise
Simply combine all ingredients up to the Duke’s in a large mixing bowl. Add about a half-cup of mayonnaise and mix with a sturdy spoon or spatula until well combined and moistened. Add more mayo, if needed, to achieve a spreadable but not overly wet end product. Serve in a hollowed-out head of cabbage, if you’re of a mind, but a bowl works just as well. Crackers, cut veggies and fried pork rinds are the best vehicles for delivery to the mouth.
— Courtesy of Drew Buzik
