WORK • Wednesday Routine
KELLEY LEVIN • hospitality marketing manager • Marin French Cheese Company
Neighborhood you live in: Glen Park
It’s Wednesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I’m grabbing coffee (my favorite roaster is Beanery SF) and then crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. The fog lingers over the freshly green hills dotted with cows and their newborn calves. I head into our cheese shop to say hello to our retail team and see if there’s any new merchandising or lunch specials for the day. Behind the shop, the cheesemaking is buzzing. You can hear faint music and singing from the production crew, hard at work making our small-batch, soft-ripened cheeses.
What’s on the agenda for today?
Twice a week, the team tastes our cheeses at different stages in their lives to make sure we’re on target for flavor, texture, and appearance. Our R&D manager shares her latest iteration of a new cheese we’re working on — it tastes great and is ready for aging trials!
This year marks the company’s 160th anniversary, so I’m doing a lot of planning around that. We’re also planning out this year’s partner tastings at the shop, where we invite local producers (McEvoy Ranch, Lala’s Jams, Goat Rock Cider) to sample and showcase their products with our cheeses. It’s a big year that we’re sharing with lots of visitors.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
Our cheese shop has a cafe menu, so my go-to order when I’m in the office is our grilled cheese and vegetable sandwich. Lately, I’ve been craving my local Glen Park spot, La Corneta Taqueria. There’s always a line, and it’s always worth the wait. On Friday nights, I bring my burrito into Glen Park Station bar and hang with the neighborhood locals.
Any weekend getaways?
I’m looking forward to a quick trip down to Pacifica to see my brother, watch the surfers, and look for whales. It always makes for a nice Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
What was your last great vacation?
New Orleans for a wedding. The Tremé Creole Gumbo Festival was such a fun way to taste traditional dishes from spots around the city. If you haven’t tried yaka mein yet, it’s a New Orleans-style noodle soup that will bring you back to life from any late-night activities. A cheese industry friend, who worked at the wonderful St. James Cheese Company for many years, started his own oyster farm in New Orleans and hosts bar pop-ups serving delicious raw and charbroiled oysters. If in town, keep an eye out for Lady Nellie Oyster Farm.