Angelo & Franco, The Mozzarella Guys

  Posted on April 7, 2010  by Leslie Blythe  1 comment

Last week, I was lucky enough to tour a Mozzarella Cheese factory –  Angelo & Franco, The Mozzarella Guys.  They are from southern Italy and opened up a cheese making facility a year ago (as of next week) in Los Angeles.  They make mozzarella, burrata (mozzarella with cream in the middle) and ricotta.

They produce very high quality Italian cheeses using local and fully natural products. They follow the original centenary old Bagnoli Irpino recipe – further developed and mastered over three generations by Franco’s family business – but produce everything from their Los Angeles based factory.  All the machinery was imported from Italy, except the pasteurizing machine, which is made in the US.

After walking through the immaculately clean facility with the master cheese maker, Franco Russo and watching the day’s ricotta being package and ready to ship, we got to taste all their products.  I’m not sure I can adequately describe this experience to convey the utter bliss of this properly.  I had never eaten fresh (made 2 hours earlier) ricotta before.  It is to die for.  Also, the mozzarella and burrata are incredible.  There is none of the rubberiness that you get from most mozzarella.  It is as light as a feather.  One thing that sets their cheese apart from the others is that they use purified water that has been pasteurized, which gives their products a longer shelf life – 20 – 30 days.

Unfortunately, they are only sold in three states at the moment – California, Nevada and Arizona.  We need to change this!

After returning home with a bag full of samples, I went out to an olive oil store and bought very special olive oil and balsamic vinegar to pour on the cheese.  Mi piace!

Here is the website: http://www.angeloandfranco.com