Satisfaction Guaranteed: How Zingerman's Built a Corner Deli into a Global Food Community by Micheline Maynard

Author:Micheline Maynard [Maynard, Micheline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

ZINGERMAN’S CREAMERY

In a deli anywhere, one menu item you’re bound to find is a bagel with cream cheese. In the streets of New York, they’re sold from coffee carts. You can find pre-assembled ones in a refrigerator case at Zabar’s, and in practically any bagel shop, you can pick up a tub of cream cheese in a variety of flavors. The Deli was no different, but for the first eighteen years it was in business, it used commercial cream cheese. Although it tried to buy the best version of someone else’s cream cheese that it could find, there was a feeling that it could do better, especially since artisanal cream cheeses had started to appear in specialty stores.

There was another need for a good cream cheese: The Bakehouse wanted a superior product as an ingredient in its baked goods, too. In 2001, John Loomis, Dave Carson, Weinzweig, and Saginaw combined forces to launch Zingerman’s Creamery, the fifth business in ZCoB, with Loomis serving as the managing partner. It began by making one product: Real Cream Cheese (on which Zingerman’s holds a trademark).

Unlike Philadelphia brand or another commercial cheese, Zingerman’s cream cheese is more like a spreadable French cheese, with tangy and salty overtones. A little goes a long way. Zingerman’s sells individual portions at the Bakehouse that look like they will barely cover half of a bagel, at least compared with the schmears that other delis and New York City coffee carts slather onto their bagels. But that small amount packs a lot of flavor.

The location of the Creamery was distinctly different from the other ZCoB businesses. Loomis set up a production facility in Manchester, Michigan, a rural town about twenty-five minutes from Ann Arbor. To produce the cream cheese, Zingerman’s takes fresh milk from the Calder Family Dairy, a local company, pasteurizes it, and then pours it into a vat where rennet and active cultures are added. After a few hours, it forms a curd. This is hand-cut with steel knives, then hung in cloth bags for the excess moisture to drain off. Once it’s drained, sea salt and cream are added to the curd, and the mixture is carefully blended. There’s none of the vegetable gum or preservatives that you’ll find in a tub of Philadelphia, and that means it needs to be eaten or used within days of buying it.

The Creamery also began to explore other products that it could produce, and the Roadhouse served as its source of inspiration. When the Roadhouse opened, one of its most popular appetizers became pimiento cheese, a tangy spread with a recipe discovered by Weinzweig that’s a combination of cheddar, black pepper, cayenne, and of course, pimientos. While it’s a staple across the South, pimiento cheese was something of a mystery for many Midwesterners when it appeared on the Roadhouse menu, myself included, but I loved its creamy texture and the little kick that ended each bite. I introduced numerous Midwestern friends to it, and one year on my birthday,

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