The store has garnered write-ups in the Boston Globe, The New Yorker, and food magazines and newspaper food sections nationwide.

The source of the hubbub is, by and large, an 8' x 10' stone-walled room in the store's basement: Gurdal's cheese cave.

The cave's environment is optimal for the aging of cheese, and at roughly 50 degrees and 98 percent humidity, occurs naturally in many European basement locales. But to recreate that in Cambridge is rather difficult.

Gurdal developed his passion for cheese under a French wine-and-cheese connoisseur in California.

"I was just so fascinated by the tastes and flavors and looks of it," he says.

So when he moved to the East Coast in 1982 and saw Formaggio Kitchen, it was a perfect fit.

He worked his way up from clerk to cheese buyer to his current post of co-owner over the course of 10 years, all the while toying with the idea of the cheese cave.