When Lydia Clarke and Reed Herrick opened their cheese shop in 2013, it was the realization of a years-long dream and part of a first wave of restaurants and shops that underpinned what many called the renaissance of downtown.
But after more than 12 years in business, Clarke and Herrick are closing DTLA Cheese Superette. Friday will be his last day. His wine bar next door, Kippered, remains open.
“It was a wave of factors that affect you,” Herrick said earlier this week of the closure. “This is a process that has been going on for years. Nobody is spending, there are protests, strikes, war, all of this applies here.”
A selection of cheeses in the refrigerated center case at DTLA Cheese Superette, which first opened more than 12 years ago in the center of Grand Central Market.
(Jennelle Fong)
Clarke and her sister, Marnie, who is also a partner, are third-generation dairy suppliers whose family founded Alta Dena Dairy. Cheese was more than a calling; It seemed like a birthright.
They Open DTLA cheese at Grand Central Market, an homage to spoonable Époisses and crumbly chunks of Jasper Hill Farm cheddar, celebrating cheesemakers from Petaluma to Parma. Herrick, the chef, created a menu of chunky salads, creamy raclette and buttered sandwiches that included the same cheeses.
In spring 2023, they expanded to a new, larger location on the corner of 4th Street and South Broadway, near Grand Central, and launched DTLA Cheese Superette as a coffee shop, market, and cheese counter. with a wine bar next doorwhere the culinary currency is canned fishserved with bubbly wines.
Herrick said the rising cost of goods and growing utilities contributed to the decision to close.
“We hate the word pivot,” Clarke said. “It makes it sound like a choice. It wasn't. It was survival. Every single thing was: Will this allow us to survive another month, another year? The last six months we were gaining momentum, then you have one more big bill… At what point do you say this isn't working?”
The city center has been particularly affected since 2020. ohOffice vacancy rates have risen to 34%., Vacancies in retail businesses reach 40%. and the “No Kings” protests and clashes with police last summer resulted in a neighborhood curfew that hurt small businesses. Some never recovered.
Many critics of city government also point to failed policies and bureaucratic obstacles.
On this specific corner, the beauty and ruin of downtown collide in front of DTLA Cheese and Kippered. The view from its windows is abandonment. O. T. Johnson Building, gutted by fire almost two decades ago and reinvented as the pirate-themed “Chateau Broadway” by street artists SC Mero and Wild Life and as a showcase for graffiti Piccle P until they recently painted it.
At DTLA Cheese, regulars showed up to enjoy Herrick's grilled cheese sandwiches, stock up on quarts of frozen soup, and chat with Clarke about seasonal cheeses.
“We love our community,” Clarke said. “We love it here. We see the same people all the time. Kippered is now a little neighborhood place and everyone is from the neighborhood.”
DTLA Cheese Superette is located on the corner of Broadway and 4th Street in downtown Los Angeles, where the number of retail businesses has decreased since 2020.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
In addition to Grand Central Market, on the first floor of the 1917 Beaux Arts-style Homer Laughlin Building, this stretch of Broadway is home to the Million Dollar Theater and the impressive Bradbury Building.
“We are united by the desire to bring people downtown and experience something fun and quintessentially Los Angeles,” Herrick said. “We need feet on the streets. Then the businesses stay. It starts with your block, your side of the street, cleaning the sidewalk, watering the plants. I'm not going to solve hunger, or war, or homelessness, or drug addiction. I'm going to solve the mess right in front of my house and pass it on to some people around me.”
Clarke plans to continue teaching cheese classes at Kippered and offer cheeses to go. On April 26, Emilia D'Albero, a Philadelphia-based cheesemaker who won last year's Mondial du Fromage in Tours, France (the first American to do so), is scheduled to visit Kippered to talk cheese.
“I wish we had been successful,” Clarke said. “I can look back and think about all the things I did wrong. And what I did right. The joy of what we built. There would be no Kippered without DTLA Cheese.
“I still love this,” he said. “There will still be cheese.”
A slice of Shabby Shoe Cheese, from Blakesville Creamery, one of Lydia Clarke's favorite cheeses.
(Jennelle Fong)
