Leah Park Fierro spent years working as a pastry chef for major hotels before striking it out on her own and opening a shop selling one of her favorite foods: cheese.
by RUTH KIM
The signs were there at a young age: sneaking Kraft singles into the rice cooker and waiting for the cheese to seep into the crevices of the bap; craving the cheese enchiladas from Koreatown’s El Cholo every birthday since she was 5 years old; and to this day, eating room-temperature juk, or rice porridge, side-by-side with cubes of cheddar. Leah Park Fierro was destined to become a cheesemonger.
“[My mother] used to tell me, ‘I can’t believe you like so much cheese, that’s so weird,’” said Fierro. “And you know, Korean moms are always like, ‘You’re fat, you’re skinny,’ so when I was young, she was always like, ‘You’re fat! It’s because you eat too much cheese!’”
The Los Angeles-born Korean American is clearly anything but overweight, but she does enjoy an envious amount of gourmet cheeses—it’s actually a job requirement. Fierro owns and runs Milkfarm, a new neighborhood cheese shop in downtown Eagle Rock, in the northeast part of Los Angeles. It offers artisanal cheeses and locally grown products, with a focus on nurturing a relationship with the surrounding community.
The brick and mortar boasts a spacious kitchen, marble countertops, floor-to-ceiling windows that welcome natural light and a huge display of cheese. The communal wooden dining table and cheeseboards in the shop were handmade by Fierro’s husband. Launched this past spring, the budding cheese shop also serves daily cut-to-order sandwiches and homemade cookies that disappear during lunch rush, and is awaiting a pending beer and wine license.
“We’ve been very blessed in getting a lot of good feedback,” said Fierro, who instinctively wipes down the counter, keeping the establishment clean and pristine. She and an employee are wearing matching bandanna headbands with their hair pulled back as a cute and clever alternative to hairnets. “[But] I’ve also realized … that you can’t please everybody. You just have to have your vision in mind and just run with it, and stay focused and on track.”
These are wise words coming from someone who’s developed a thick skin over her 15 years of work in the food industry. After Fierro, who grew up in the Southern California suburb of Monterey Park, graduated from high school in 1999, she veered off the beaten path of going to a four-year university, and instead, made plans to attend culinary school. “At that time, the food-TV craze was not very much in existence like it is now. It wasn’t very popular to think about cooking,” said Fierro.
Her mother’s reaction was predictable. “She totally flipped out because, of course, all of us are supposed to go to college, be doctors or lawyers or something,” Fierro recalled.
However, even though she didn’t completely understand her daughter’s decision, Fierro said her mother has “always been really supportive,” and so when Fierro left for San Francisco to pursue her culinary dream, mom came along. There, her mother helped Fierro find an apartment and get settled before she started her studies at the California Culinary Academy, an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu, where she specialized in pastries. After she graduated, Fierro worked for seven years as a pastry chef for a number of formidable luxury hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons Palo Alto, Raffles L’Ermitage, and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
And then, one day, she quit. In the primarily male-dominated restaurant world, Fierro remembers feeling underestimated and overlooked as an Asian, female chef during the early 2000s. It didn’t help that she looks so young, she said. “My entire career, I’ve always been the one in charge, but everyone has always looked over my shoulder looking for the older, white guy [in the kitchen],” she said.
Lugging a 50-pound backpack, she traveled by herself for a year through Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and the majority of Western Europe. Experiencing the nuances of each culture, including the food, her perspective began to shift. “Everything from all of the little tiny shops that I saw was something that I really embraced and I really enjoyed,” she said. “And it really opened my eyes to see that corporate life was really taking a toll on me.”
Returning home with a new sense of purpose, Fierro decided to take a hiatus from the corporate restaurant industry. “I decided to work in a small cheese store, or something that was reminiscent of something that I had seen while traveling,” she said. What she thought would be a two-month stint at The Cheesestore of Silverlake turned into six years as the shop’s general manager. Then she set out to start her own cheese store.
Fierro spent nine months scouting locations until she realized that Eagle Rock—a nearby neighborhood where she spent much of her youth hanging out with friends—was the ideal location. “I really noticed the community [here] changing,” said Fierro. “And so when it came time for us to pick a location, I just thought, where can we live and raise our family and be close to our family? And this was it. This was like the perfect place.”
With the money that she and her husband, who works as a paramedic in the nearby city of San Gabriel, had saved to buy a house, the two decided to start the business. “I had this vision of Milkfarm as one word, to create a brand for myself,” said Fierro. “I feel like people don’t think about where cheese actually comes from and how it’s made. You need milk to make cheese, and guess what—usually there is a farm involved! City living really removes one from thinking about where our food comes from.”
Fierro is embracing the name, reciting the shop’ s main mantra: “Good food, slow food, local, seasonal, artisanal, educational.” Milkfarm works with local vendors, notably Mike Scott of Eagle Rock Farms who provides the shop with fresh and organic ingredients, and recently partnered with Mad Port Wine Lounge, which sells Milkfarm’s cheeseboards at their store. The cheese shop hosts “Meet the Maker” events, where a local artisanal producer comes in to showcase their items to patrons at the communal table. Tiny pins are stuck on a U.S. map that hangs on a wall to inform customers where the cheeses and meats originate. Nestled cozily next to a pizzeria, and near a French café, a play lounge for kids, a church and a few schools, the friendly, neighborhood cheese shop is in the heart of a young, thriving community.
“You know, it’s very gratifying for me for children to come in here and try different cheeses [and] take a look at my map,” said Fierro. “And so, having a store like this allows me to introduce people that are making these locally, and put a face to the name of the food. That’s what it’s about. Just introducing good food to people.”
LET’S TALK ABOUT CHEESE
Leah Fierro’s Personal Faves:
Challerhocker: a “phenomenal” un-pasteurized cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland.
Couronne de Touraine: a donut-shaped goat milk cheese with ash.
Andante dairy cheeses: from a Korean woman in Northern California who “herds all of her own animals and makes the cheeses from beginning to end by hand.”
Bay Blue: a bleu cheese by Point Reyes Company—“I really love that blue,” says Fierro.
Milkfarm’s Other Must-Haves
Parmigiano-Reggiano: a classic, Italian hard cheese.
Manchego: a creamy, buttery cheese made from the milk of sheep of the manchega breed.
Saint Agur: a double-cream blue cheese.
Midnight Moon: a “very popular,” nutty, buttery Gouda cheese with a caramel finish.