Local Mexican markets sell a variety of queso Oaxaca brands, but none match the full, rich flavor and soft glossiness of the woven cheese I buy at farmers markets from King’s Mozzarella. The freshness, of both the local milk used to make the cheese and the cheese itself, makes all the difference. Or, it did, until November.

Costas Romero said little on the King’s Mozzarella website and social media after the election, only noting the final markets of the fall season and that they would be back in spring. He still says they will be, but now it’s spring 2026.

“I still have a lot of things to do here,” Romero says from his hometown of Puebla, Mexico. After 30 years of making cheese and seven running his business, he was tired. He, his wife, and their three children returned to the country he had left as a teenager. Romero took the winter to rest, spending time with his mother, who he said doesn’t have too much time left. Now, he’s ready to work again, but not yet ready to return, for a few reasons.

Despite having left Mexico at age 15 and lived in the US for 39 years, the current political situation concerns him. “We do look Spanish. And even my kids, they look Spanish,” he says. “We don’t feel secure to go to the markets. Something will happen; it will ruin my life.”

When he arrived in the US, Romero found his calling at a large Italian cheesemaker in New York. He learned to make mozzarella and spent the first decades of his cheesemaking career focused on Italian-style cheeses.

When he came to Seattle to represent the company at a Costco Roadshow, he fell in love with the city and wondered to himself why he and his wife were raising their three children elsewhere when a place like this existed. When he got home, they packed up the house and moved across the country.

Once he arrived, he saw what he had missed in his haste. If he wanted to keep doing the job he loved, he would have to start his own company, and King’s was born. He made the Italian-style mozzarella he had worked with for so many years and developed his own line of marinated mozzarella balls. Though it was less his area of expertise, he saw a hole in the market and began selling Mexican-style cheeses—the queso Oaxaca and queso fresco.

Now, he wants to do more. “They have a lot of other cheese here,” he says of Puebla, comparing various local styles to cream cheese and Parmesan; getting excited about smoked cotija and flavored fresh cheeses. “We are learning, and we’re going to bring it back when we come back.” Romero sees space in Seattle for those products, and for other ones that he’s just now developing. 

Just not quite yet: First, he wants to start making his classic products and experimenting with new ones in Puebla. “In the near future, there’s going to be a King’s Mozzarella Mexico,” he says. Perhaps sensing my suspicion at what this means for Seattle’s queso needs, he says that following the company’s Facebook page is the best way to keep track of him and the eventual return to the Northwest.

“King’s Mozzarella is definitely coming back,” he says. Then he pauses. “We’re just not sure when.”