Salvatore Bklyn is one of two small food businesses hatched in the kitchen of Lunetta (see page 142) in Boerum Hill. (The other is Pizza Moto, a mobile brick-oven pizzeria.) Devine, a former chef de cuisine at Lunetta, makes the cheese—ricotta and smoked ricotta, made with whole milk curdled in lemon juice—while Mark, her wife and business partner, handles sales and marketing. Mark’s day job at a wine importer keeps her in close contact with chefs, and in fact that’s where she was when we interviewed Devine (far right) at Lunetta.
So, how’d you wind up becoming a cheese-maker?
Rachel was in Italy for a couple months a few years ago, learning to speak Italian, and at the tail end of the trip I joined her. We rented a car, drove around, and basically gorged ourselves. At one point we were in San Gimignano. Rachel had been there about a month earlier, and she’d met this guy Salvatore, who owned a place called Enoteca Gustavo. So we went to eat there, and he served us this ricotta on tomato toasts. He had this technique where he would put the tomato on grilled bread and cut it on the bread, so the tomato would just seep into the cheese and bread. Sooo good. And we were like, That’s the bomb.
But there wasn’t this eureka moment: Oh, let’s start a business and do that. In fact, after we left Italy we went to South America for five months, where there was quite the opposite of a culinary culture, in a lot of ways. But when we came back home, I started cooking at Lunetta, and at one point we said, Remember Salvatore and that amazing ricotta? How can we make that?
Did his ricotta make such an impression because it was just delicious or because it was delicious and stylistically different—thicker and creamier—than typical ricotta we have here?
Both. Like many things over there, it was just: This is how it’s supposed to be.
Did he show you how to make it?
He didn’t really tell us how to make it. It wasn’t like we sat and he taught us his ways. We ended up calling the company after him because he was just an inspirational person; he awakened us to something. And we thought he was just the bee’s knees.
You started serving it at Lunetta before you officially founded Salvatore Bklyn. What was the dish when you first put it on the menu?
A grilled piece of bread, rubbed with garlic, spread with cheese, and topped with a little salt, pepper, olive oil, and lemon zest.
How much cheese will you make this month?
We average 300 pounds a week, so about 1,200 pounds. About 40 percent of that goes to retail, 60 percent wholesale.
Has Salvatore had your cheese?
No, he hasn’t! But we’re in contact. We’re planning to go over there soon, to hang out with him, and maybe see some mozzarella production facilities for giggles.
ls that in the long-term plan—expanding into mozzarella production?
[big inhale] I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. I mean, it’s definitely another huge project…. I’m torn. I kinda love the simplicity of just doing one item, and doing it well.
