Village Cheese Merchant celebrates one year in Rockville Centre

On a recent Thursday afternoon, business partners Chris O’Mara and Patrick Ambrosio’s shop on South Park Avenue was quieter than normal. Just after 3 p.m., loyal customers Greg and Sandra Hacker and Matthew Miniero, all of Oceanside, walked in with eager smiles on their faces. They have been coming to the Village Cheese Merchant since it opened in December 2017.

“They like the hard Italian stuff, like the piave, the moliterno,” Ambrosio advised the counter staff. Soon he got behind the counter himself, cutting cheese and meat on the slicer and handing out samples.

Ambrosio, 62, of Huntington, previously owned a cheese shop called Le Bon Fromage in his hometown, which the Hackers and Miniero frequented. Now they come to Village Cheese Merchant, at 28 S. Park Ave., not just for the variety of 70 cheeses, but also to learn the rich history of those offerings.

“He’s so well-versed on the cheeses,” Greg Hacker said of Ambrosio. “We follow him wherever he goes.”

A 1990 graduate of the French Culinary Institute, now known as the International Culinary Institute, Ambrosio was once a private chef in New York City. While shopping for the family he cooked for at high-end gourmet markets, he would sample the large selection of cheeses.

Having read “Cheese Primer” by Steven Jenkins, a renowned guide to cheeses from France, Italy, Switzerland and several other countries, and teaching himself about cheeses as he tasted them, Ambrosio was on his way to becoming a cheese expert when he moved to California in 1999.

While living at the Russian Hill Estate Winery in Sonoma County, he got a job at the cheese counter of the Dean and DeLuca grocery store in Napa Valley, where he worked for three years.

“It was kind of love at first sight,” Ambrosio recalled. “I was working with about 300 to 400 cheeses, and thought, wow, this is great. This is what I want to do.”

He made the most of his expertise, writing about cheese for magazines like France Today and Culture, manning the cheese counter at Whole Foods and working for online cheese retail giant igourmet.com.

After moving back to New York in 2008, Ambrosio ran his cheese business in Huntington for a year, and then, about eight years ago, he began looking for a new venture.

At the time, O’Mara, of Rockville Centre, posted on a message board for the American Cheese Society, “I’m looking to start a cheese shop in Rockville Centre; is anyone interested?” Growing up, she frequented cheese stores in eastern Long Island and believed that something similar would work in Rockville Centre, where she has lived for 18 years. She just needed someone who knew cheese.

Ambrosio was the only one on Long Island to respond to O’Mara’s inquiry and, as she soon learned, “How much he knows about cheese is really fascinating and impressive,” she said. The two met and discussed possibly opening a shop, but they didn’t make concrete plans until 2016.

“For a while, this was a fantasy for me,” O’Mara, 49, said. “I had this grand idea, and [the shop’s location] was vacant for so long, so I would laugh and say, ‘Oh, look, that’s where I want my cheese shop to be!’”

What she lacked in cheese expertise, she made up for with her knowledge of the village. She adorned the laid-back space with modern décor. She also studied finance in college and leads a household of four children. “My husband says, ‘She’s the president and CEO of the house,’” O’Mara said. “I think raising kids is a really good experience in life and you can gain a lot of life experience that lends itself well, even to this.”

But it’s O’Mara and Ambrosio’s shared love of cheese that really makes the shop a success — and the up-and-coming artisan foodie culture, paired with the shop’s proximity to parking, doesn’t hurt either, they said.

A trip to the store opens up to customers a new world of food, from the large variety of cheeses and meats to the pantry items that line the wall and window. Plus, Ambrosio is always there with a history lesson.

“Conte cheese represents a way of life and income for an entire region and there’s a history there,” he explained. “This is these people’s lives.”

The business owners are looking to expand their offerings next year to become a “one-stop shop for your entertaining needs,” O’Mara said. They also plan to hold educational events on cheese.

“It’s our job, in a way, to take [customers to] places, as far as cheese and food, that they might not necessarily go,” Ambrosio said. “I want to put an emphasis on tasting and broadening palettes to increase their appreciation and enjoyment of all this.”