A Tasty Chat with San Diego’s Eminent ‘Cheese Wiz’
By Frank Sabatini Jr.
Before we had retail access to aged Gouda, triple-cream brie, luscious burrata, and a host of other artisan cheeses of domestic and international origins, along came Venissimo.
The Mission Hills cheese shop was founded in 2004 by East Village residents Gina Freize and her husband Roger. Their selection instantly bewitched our senses with the kind of unctuous high-flavor curds that belonged at the time to fledgling farmers markets and vendors in Europe and other U.S. cities.
Freize not only filled a gastronomic void in San Diego with novel choices, but she has since provided a supply line to numerous chefs, breweries and wine bars that choose sophistication over anything their big-name wholesalers sell.
We caught up with Freize to get a glimpse of what’s trending in an industry many of us can’t live without.
Downtown Condo Guys: How many Venissimo shops currently exist?
Freize: Three. We have the original one in Mission Hills, which we refer to as ‘the little engine that does’ because it never shut down during the pandemic, plus one in Del Mar’s Flower Hill Promenade, and a smaller version of the business inside Bottlecraft in North Park.
Downtown Condo Guys: You also operated Downtown at some point, correct?
Freize: Yes, we tried twice. First in the East Village before jumping over to The Headquarters. Unfortunately those didn’t work economically because they didn’t get the traffic that our other shops do.
Downtown Condo Guys: How many different types of cheeses do you carry on average?
Freize: About 100. They’re categorized by milk type, country of origin, and style. We want to represent the world, so we have something from everywhere. Cheese can be made in all styles from any of the milks: cow, goat, sheep, buffalo, which we call ‘the big four’ types.
Downtown Condo Guys: What originally drew you into this business?
Freize: A love of cheese and I wanted my own business. Plain and simple. I eat a piece of cheese every day and never get tired of it. Before this, I was in marketing/public relations for the beer and wireless industries.
Downtown Condo Guys: What are artisan cheese makers crafting these days?
Freize: One trend I’m seeing a lot are flavor-infused cheeses, such as dusting them with rosemary, rubbing the rinds with espresso, or sprinkling in chili flakes. There are also a lot of beer-soaked concepts because craft beer continues taking off. And people are taking classic cheeses and making their own versions of them from their own regions.
Downtown Condo Guys: What is the most expensive cheese you carry?
Freize: Our 15-year-old Wisconsin cheddar from Hooks. It’s made by a husband-wife team from Wisconsin and sells for about $55 a pound.
Downtown Condo Guys: Name a few cheeses you currently carry and recommend that we won’t find in the grocery stores?
Freize: August is our peak season for buffalo-milk mozzarella from Italy and it’s delicious. We also have a spectacular Italian cheese called Foglie di Tabacco, which is wrapped in tobacco leaves. You only need one bite, and it’s amazing. And after being banned a few times because of FDA regulations, we carry mimolette. It’s from the French-Belgian border and has a rind that looks like the outside of a cantaloupe. The aging process happens because of cheese mites, a natural occurrence that makes it so unique.
Downtown Condo Guys: What are some of the most common misconceptions or curiosities novices express when walking into your shops?
Freize: I often say to customers that cheese is not mayonnaise. It can sit all day. It’s really hard for it to go bad. That’s hard for people to understand because our culture is so used to refrigerating everything. Also, you can eat the rinds. Please try it because the flavor can be completely different than the cheese that’s underneath.
Downtown Condo Guys: Do you offer classes and workshops?
Freize: Yes, since March of 2020 we did more than 70 virtual classes, and we’ll continue some of those because people loved them! In-person classes—our ‘Academy of Cheese’ series will start resuming on the patio at our Del Mar shop, and at Seven Grand (www.sevengrand.com) in North Park.
Downtown Condo Guys: You know we can’t say goodbye before asking for your favorite and least favorite cheeses.
Freize: My go-to for anytime and any situation is an Alpine cheese because they are typically made from raw milk and they have a complex flavor—sweet, nutty, salty, and everything in one bite. They never let me down. Personally, very soft, ripened goat cheeses are not my favorite. They’re delicious to others, but not to me.
