Cheese Shops We Love: Mongers’ Provisions
Locations
3127 12 Mile Rd
Berkley, MI 48072
4240 Cass Avenue, #111
Detroit, MI 48201
Finding Love & Cheese
“I saw that love came out of the kitchen,” recalls Mongers’ Provisions co-owner and Michigan native Zach Berg, “and I really wanted to be a part of that,” he says, recognizing from a tender age even as a restaurant dishwasher that his adult future would be in the culinary space in some regard.
After a hospitality management degree from Michigan State University, Berg worked with legendary Ann Arbor deli Zingerman’s, which turned out to be a crash course in cheese appreciation. “At that point, I knew really nothing about cheese,” says Berg. “I was the average American in the sense that I could tell you that cheddar, gruyère, and brie existed, but those terms meant nothing.” It was a taste of Gabietou, a French washed rind, mixed-milk cheese during his training at Zingerman's that opened up the possibility of cheese as a slice of the culinary realm where he might eventually find a spiritual — and physical — home. “I remember looking at whoever was doing the tasting with me and being like, where was this? Why did no one tell me flavor existed like this?” recalls Berg. “It was a moment where something just clicked.”
Following an extended stint at Zingerman’s, he decided to pursue further culinary aims via an accelerated cooking program in Napa Valley. “My dream was always to be a chef owner,” says Berg. “That was the path I thought I was on for so long.” Like many with chef dreams, however, the restaurant kitchen experience proved disheartening. It was a California run-in with former boss, Zingerman’s founder Ari Weinzweig, that helped put him back on a genuine path to cheese. “(Ari) looked at me and said, ‘You look miserable. Why don't you go back to cheese? You are a really happy person.’ And yeah, I listened.”
Berg stayed in California for a spell, working with famed San Francisco grocer Bi-Rite as a return to the cheese business, before deciding to return to Michigan to open his own. “I knew I wanted to open up a business, buy a home, and start a family,” he says, “and it seemed like the idea of convincing somebody I met in San Francisco to move to snowy Michigan was not a likely order of operations. So I moved on to accomplish those things.” (Of note: he accomplished all 3 in the span of 6 years, so if the cheese business doesn’t pan out, I see a promising future as a life coach.)
Partnering with longtime friend and budding chocolatier Will Werner, they opened up a cheese and chocolate counter in a butcher shop in order to avoid the lengthy inspection process of a new space by opening in an existing business. After a year and a half of that model, delivering chocolate and cheese samples to Southeastern Michigan foodies who were lining up for hyper-local, ethically sourced meat, in 2018 Mongers’ Provisions finally found a space of their own.
The Store(s)
Opening a store in Detroit was always an important piece of the plan for Berg, as a way to marry his urban experience in San Francisco with his suburban Michigan upbringing. “Detroit's a world class city, and it deserves world class amenities,” says Berg, and additionally, “I feel strongly about the Jewish Detroiters’ narrative that everyone left and then moved farther away. It was important to me that my family's story went back. The health of Southeastern Michigan is the health of Detroit. I feel strongly about that, and so I wanted to be impactful.”
Indeed, as a fellow native Michigander, it’s impossible not to notice how, even in the suburbs radiating outward from Detroit, the culinary and artisanal food scene is growing seemingly exponentially. At a visit to Mongers’ Provisions second location in Berkley over the holidays, I was thrilled to find a bustling enterprise, with several mongers working the well-stocked case, (the only place I’ve seen Piave Vecchio Oro stateside,) a (literal) wall of chocolate, every kind of cheese accoutrement or resource you might seek, (including Meg Quinn’s Cheese Board Deck,) and a robust wine selection that also pays rightful homage to Michigan’s on-the-rise wine industry. It is, in a word: inviting. And in another? Fun.
Best Sellers
L’Amuse Signature Gouda
No stranger to the best selling cheeses in our Cheese Shops We Love series, Berg cites as Mongers’ Provisions top seller, joining ranks with Philadelphia’s DiBruno Bros., and New York’s Bedford Cheese Shop where this is also the case, or…kase.
A kind of gouda cheese candy made in the Netherlands by affinage whisperer Betty Koster and imported by Essex St. Cheese Co., it’s a no-brainer for Berg: “A two-and-a-half year old, aged gouda, it’s just delicious,” he says.
“A really simple double cream that is always consistent and always works,” says Berg, of France’s Fromager d’Affinois. Because of its easy fandom, Berg uses this approachable selection to educate customers about bloomy rinds broadly. “When the American consumer says ‘brie,’ what they mean is this cheese. We often get other cheeses that are more serious representations of brie, but Fromager d’Affinois is what people love.”
From my personal experience, the mere word “Challerhocker” has the ability to make a room full of cheese professionals swoon — a deeply flavored, wine-washed, Alpine-style cheese from the hands of Switzerland’s Walter Rass.
“We got to visit Walter Rass this summer which was so special,” says Berg. “We asked what it’s like to be a cheese rock star and he said, ‘This doesn't exist in Switzerland. It’s an American thing. My neighbors don't care who I am.’”
Also Look For
“Like many small businesses, when guests ask us to do something we tend to just say yes,” says Berg. “Before I opened Mongers I knew that we could never just be just a cheese shop.” Indeed, the banner for Mongers’ Provisions isn’t so much “cheese retailer” as “culinary outfitter,” where a focus on chocolate also makes up 50% of the ownership effort.
“It was also really important to me that we were going to do grilled cheeses eventually,” says Berg, and Mongers’ now serves grilled cheese sandwiches 6 days a week in both locations, as a means of highlighting different, often adventurous cheeses in an approachable format and a reasonable price. “Introducing things like Raclette to Detroit by putting Better Made potato chips and cornichons in the sandwich. People are into that.”