Here’s the thing with reunions: they are often the most fun for those doing the reminiscing. Just ask anyone who was dragged to their spouse’s high school homecoming, where they inevitably spent an evening listening to people they don’t know recounting events in which they didn’t take part.
But that wasn’t the case at Berkeley’s Hillside Club recently, when over 100 people paid for the privilege. Not only did they sample pizza and, of course, cheese, but they listened to a panel of former workers from the Cheese Board Collective reminisce about working in the early days of the shop in advance of its 60th anniversary next year.
Elizabeth Magarian Valoma and Sahag Avedisian, a married couple of Armenian descent, originally opened The Cheese Board in 1967 on Vine Street, in the location that houses Fava now. The place was very much a product of its time; in 1971, the couple sold it to their employees, but stayed on, turning it into a collective, where everyone was paid the same amount, and there was no boss or hierarchy; all decisions were made by the employees at regular meetings. The model is still in practice and emulated today.
A chalkboard on the side of the room depicted the Cheese Board’s history. It included pivotal moments such as the introduction of baguettes and pizza, as well as numerous expansions that took over other businesses on the block. Alice Waters, who says The Cheese Board influenced her decision to open Chez Panisse in the North Shattuck area, was also in attendance.
Berkeley historian, food scene observer and Hillside Club member L. John Harris, who used to be known as “The Garlic Guy,” convened the event. Harris was the instigator for a garlic festival at Chez Panisse that continues to this day, and published a book about garlic in 1974, when most American households still favored the powdered form of the allium.
Bob Klein, a former television producer, owner of Community Grains, and the former owner with his wife Maggie of the Rockridge restaurant Oliveto, set the scene by saying that when he moved to Berkeley from his native Los Angeles (where he went to high school with Harris), “The world kind of opened for me. As you remember, in the sixties and seventies, it was alive. There was politics. There was civil rights. There was the sexual revolution. There was food.” Klein worked at the Cheese Board in the early days on Saturday mornings, saying, “It was a wonderful place to be.”
Klein’s remarks were followed by a television segment he produced about the Cheese Board in 1977 and then a panel discussion featuring former employees from the early years, some of whom spent nearly their entire careers there.
As someone who has been to the Cheese Board and eaten its pizza (which has its own unique style: no tomato sauce, always vegetarian with multiple varieties of cheese, one variety available per night) I knew a bit about the place, but I came away with all kinds of fun anecdotes and facts that I didn’t know. Here’s a baker’s dozen of my favorite things I learned.
1. The founding couple was greatly influenced by what they witnessed while living on a kibbutz in Israel, where they met. Valoma spent time there with her first husband, Richard Mitchell, on archaeological digs, and while there, happened to meet Avedisian, a kibbutz volunteer. “A cooperative, collective life where people worked and created and cared together, that idea clearly took root in her because she carried it all the way back to Berkeley and into everything she did, including the Cheese Board,” Valoma’s brother Richard Magarian said.
2. Peet’s Coffee founder Alfred Peet advised the couple against opening the store. “He said it will never work, ‘You don’t know anything about business, you know nothing about cheese,’ which was true,” Harris said, quoting Valoma. When there was a line outside the door and they made $95 in sales on their first day, Peet changed his tune. “You’ll make it,” he told them.
3. In the early days, Valoma encouraged her friends to bring in their homemade blintzes and pumpkin date-nut bread to sell in the store. “For years, we made thousands of cream cheese sandwiches on that pumpkin date-nut bread,” Makarian said.
4. It was a rare occasion that any outside person was called upon to build or fix anything at the Cheese Board Collective. All wooden shelving and tables were built by its employees, who were also knowledgeable about plumbing and electricity. Everyone’s skills were put to use.
5. Valoma and Avedisian were surrogate parents for many of the employees, most of whom were transplants to Berkeley. Harris said their nurturing spirit also extended to people like free speech leader Mario Savio, who suffered from depression, and would come by seeking Avedisian’s companionship.
6. Valoma hated publicity and promoting The Cheese Board. She always declined interviews or offers to speak about it, even though many wanted to learn from their example.
7. The Cheese Board was part of a bread revolution taking place in Berkeley at the time. The first bread was a cheese-curry bread, using all the odds and ends of cheese that they couldn’t sell.
8. In the early days, there were a lot of failures in the bread program; its baguette was introduced in 1977, according to a graphic of the Cheese Board’s evolution on the side of the room. “We all went to the same school of baking,” Laura McNall said. “It was the trial-and-error school of baking, or the seat-of-your-pants school of baking.” After years of trying, they created a dough that worked and was spun off into focaccia, pizza, and other products. After many years there, she and another employee finally attended some classes at the San Francisco Baking Institute, and “That’s where we learned the traditional way of making French baguettes, and we saw that it’s nothing like what we do,” said McNall. Bob Waks, also speaking about the early bread days, said that only one out of ten times would the bread turn out impeccable, with “the crust shattering when you bit into it.”
9. The Cheese Board spawned other collectives in the area, with some lasting and others not. The Swallow Cafe didn’t last, and Arizmendi, which now has four locations, did. The Cheese Board and Arizmendi continue their cooperative relationship, including sharing resources and advice during the COVID-19 pandemic.
10. This one sounds impossible to believe: Cheese Board employees used to work only 25 hours a week, and not only lived on that in Berkeley, but some employees also owned their own homes nearby. Now, they work the standard 40-hour workweek, and most can’t afford Berkeley rents; most employees live much farther away.
11. A fun factoid gleaned from Klein’s film: The store once carried a cheese cured in horse manure. I tried to find out more about it after the event, asking panelist Giorgia Neidorf for her recollections. She instantly recalled “the stinkiest cheese” called Gamalost. According to Norwegian or Viking folklore, it was purportedly cured in manure, but more likely was stored in a barn. Neidorf never tasted it herself, and, in the 15 years she worked there, never sold it to anyone, either. But they did carry it that entire time. “We wanted to have 200 cheeses and be a complete cheese store,” she said.
12. Fromager d’Affinois, a French double-cream cheese similar to Brie, is the Cheese Board’s top seller today, according to current Cheese Board employee Dan Falsetto.
13. Valoma loved to laugh, which she did loudly and often. On her last day before she retired, the staff decided to elicit it one last time. She arrived at work and started her usual morning routine. Then she noticed that her colleagues were all naked beneath their aprons; her guffaws are remembered to this day.
