December 2014/January 2015 71 Peg Smith (left) and Sue Conley reign over the cheese counter in their Point Reyes Station store. 5 COWGIRL CREAMERY 80 FOURTH ST., POINT REYES STATION; 415/663-9335; COWGIRLCREAMERY.COM Cowgirl Creamery is a legend in its own time, and that’s obvious when you stop by its Point Reyes Station location, a cavernous metal, barnlike building with picnic benches outside. In the early 1990s, restaurant legends Sue Conley and Peggy Smith began experimenting making fresh cheese from neighboring Straus Family Creamery milk. These two “cowgirls” now are the faces of a cheese-making empire that includes sites in Petaluma, San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Washington, D.C. Today, Cowgirl makes only its Red Hawk triple cream cheese in Point Reyes, and from a large window on one wall of this retail and take-out “cantina” restaurant, you can catch a view of those tasty wheels being created. Red Hawk began life by accident, explains one chipper counter employee. “A batch of fromage blanc was feared to have gotten a cheese mite,” he says, “so they scrubbed it and, hoping that they weren’t going to lose a batch, scrubbed it again. A visiting cheese-monger from England said, ‘Look here, I think you’ve got something.’ It was so serendipitous.” As it turns out, the pungent Red Hawk depends on the very air of Point Reyes. Its sunset-colored rind is the result of being washed with a brine solution, which in turn cultivates the growth of bacteria called b-linen. “A chemist from UC Davis studied it and found that there is much higher saturation of b-linen here at Point Reyes than in Petaluma,” says the spokesman. Cowgirl Creamery is such an industry star that it even sells cheeses from other vendors, including up and coming Bleating Heart Cheese. “We love our cheese, but it would be a boring world if we just sold our own,” says the spokesman. CHEESY BITES Organic artisan cheese made, yes, from cow’s milk. VIBE Industrial chic meets the farmers market. BOOTS OR HEELS Not a cow in sight, so dust off the Manolos, although the place is so popular you may have to park a few blocks away. TOUR/TASTING OPTIONS Drop-in tasting and retail operation. Pre-booked guided presentations. n SARA REMINGTON; OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF COWGIRL CREAMERY
South Bay Accent - Dec 2014/Jan 2015
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