Cheese Shops We Love: Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery

40 West Green St

Pasadena CA 91105

 

When Vanessa Tilaka grew up in Montebello, she and her family would cross the San Gabriel Valley to hang out and shop in Pasadena. “Back then it was all chain restaurants and smaller mom and pops didn’t stand a chance,” she recalls. As a result, when the opportunity arose for Tilaka and her husband Thomas Kalb to open Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery, Pasadena wasn’t initially their top choice. They explored DTLA’s Arts District and Mid-City, but didn’t want to be a “small fish coming into a big sea.” She adds, “We’d rather open quietly and organically grow with the community. We started to do market research on Pasadena and saw the younger families moving here, the people walking around day to day, where they were eating, the changes that the food scene was experiencing, and we thought we could help Pasadena be a part of the conversation as a serious food city.”

The seasoned culinary pros worked in restaurants like San Francisco’s Flour + Water, Chicago’s Lula Café and L.A.’s The Spice Table. For the couple’s first restaurant, which they named for Kalb’s grandmother Mary Agnes, they selected an airy space with character to spare that previously held post-production office and proved large enough to host multiple elements. A market and cheese shop up front transitions through a dining room and open kitchen to a relaxing back patio that feels a world apart from Old Pasadena’s bustling crowds.

 

Inventing a Cheesery

“Cheesery” is a unique moniker the couple created. “In France a cheese shop is called fromagerie,” Tilaka says. “We wanted something more unique.” Tilaka naturally became Agnes’s “Head Cheese,” since she curates the cheese selection. She generally stocks about 50 cheeses from around the world.

Recent choices included Cave-Aged Marisa, a Gouda-style sheep and cow’s milk cheese from California’s Central Coast; Flory’s Truckle, an aged clothbound Cheddar from Missouri; and Secret de Compostelle, raw sheep’s milk cheese from France’s Basque country. Small format cheeses are available in the grab-and-go case and Agnes can also prepare larger format custom cheese platters.

“The selection changes weekly and as distributors bring in what’s available from overseas,” Tilaka says. “Some items are seasonal and local as well. I take guest requests into consideration too. I see what is working well and what is less popular and am constantly evolving the offerings.”

Agnes has only been open since June 1, but Tilaka has already identified some consumer trends. ”I’ve found that blue cheese isn’t as popular as I expected,” she says. “Same with traditional varieties like Manchego and Parmigiano, but new selections with fun names or descriptors are doing really well.”

 

On the Menu

The restaurant also offers cheese boards ($20 for 3 cheeses and $26 for 5 cheeses). Tilaka champions “variety” when composing a cheese plate, a “mixture of flavors, textures and milk types.” She says, “There should always be a soft and hard cheese. There should always be different milk types and from different countries of origin. Mustards, jams and jelly are nice compliments to the meats and cheeses. Pickles, fruit, and nuts are also great to offer crunch and cleanse the palate. As for crackers or bread, it’s up to the diner and the cheese.” She personally prefers crackers, but uses baguettes “if it’s a gooey, stinky cheese that needs to be spread onto something hearty.”

At my recent dinner, the “daily mongers selection” consisted of Trillium, a nettle coated cow’s milk cheese from Indiana’s Tulip Tree Creamery, Cremeux de St. Augustin cow’s milk cheese from France, Sainte-Maure de Touraine goat’s milk cheese from France, L’amuse Gouda cow’s milk cheese from Holland, and Campo de Montalban blended cow, sheep and goat’s milk cheese from Spain. The plate also hosted crackers, corn nuts, raspberry jam, and accouterments like dried apricots, red grapes, tart sliced green apples, and tangy cornichons. 

Agnes dishes also incorporate cheeses from their display case, including crispy California cheese curds with buttermilk ranch, sesame grissini (breadsticks) with Pimento cheese and “cherries in the snow,” a luxurious cherry cheesecake.

“We use cheeses from the shop in menu items in the restaurant in hopes that it’ll not only elevate the dish, but show off how versatile cheeses are,” Tilaka says. “We use Pantaleo, a goat cheese from Sardinia, in the chicories and stone fruit salad. It’s not common to see hard goat cheeses out of Italy, but it adds a tangy, robust flavor to the bitter castelfranco and sweetness of the stone fruit. We previously had on a saffron cavatelli with braised lamb neck pasta that featured Aries cheese, also from Shooting Star Creamery, which is a sheep’s milk Alpine-style cheese that really brought out the flavors of the lamb, earthiness of the saffron and mellowed out the sweetness of the grilled grapes.”

Tilaka has more plans for Agnes’s cheese program after the pandemic finally subsides, including informational and interactive classes in their private room on topics like Old World vs. New World, Cooking with Cheese, and Cheeses of Spain/Italy/France, etc. 

The world of cheese is vast and is only becoming harder to truly understand given the steady supply of new releases, but Tilaka’s focused vision that provides Pasadena cheese lovers with reasons to keep returning to Agnes.

 

Top Selling Cheeses

Tilaka broke down Agnes’s three top-selling cheeses, noting, “I think the flavor and the fun stories behind the cheeses sell them.”

 

Sagittarius

“Sagittarius by Shooting Star Creamery is a brainchild of the 16-year-old daughter of Central Coast Creamery owner. It’s a cow and sheep milk Gouda-style that tastes of fresh milk and toasted nuts.”

 

Campo de Montalban

“Campo de Montalban is a cow, goat, sheep mixture from Spain done in the style of Manchego, and in fact it was Manchego before Spain protected Manchego production to be made with only sheep’s milk, but is sweeter with the addition of cow’s milk.”

 

Brabander Gouda

(“Brabander Gouda (aged 6-9 months) is near and dear to my heart. It is my absolute favorite cheese and the case tag says so. When we select cheeses to put on cheese boards or I taste guests on cheeses, this is my go to and guests always come back for more. Betty Koster, the maker, uses a unique aging technique that allows the cheese to develop more nutty and complex flavors. She also takes Brabander wheels and ages them an extra 10 months, calls it Black Betty, and only releases them once a year in the winter time. This is Thomas’ favorite cheese and I named my motorcycle after it.”