14 JANUARY 4, 2018 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
New business ‘Mozzareal’ takes pride
in hand-crafted, authentic recipes
Guy Mercurio (right) and his son Joe (left) stand with cheese makers Rodolfo and Gaetano after making a fresh batch of mozzarella.
BY RYAN KELLEY
RKELLEY@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
TWITTER @R_KELLEY6
Before Mozzareal opened in
Ridgewood on Dec. 13, the Department
of Agriculture didn’t
know how to classify the fresh cheese-
and pasta-making operation.
According to owner Guy Mercurio,
a 25-year native of Ridgewood, that’s
because the shop at 60-61 Cooper Ave.
has a cheese-making process that has
never been tried in New York City before.
Mercurio has raw milk delivered
from a small farm in upstate New York,
pasteurizes it on site, and turns it into
mozzarella and ricotta cheeses in a
matter of hours.
“If it’s milk at fi ve in the morning, it’s
fresh mozzarella by 10 a.m. and ready
to be consumed,” Mercurio told QNS.
This unique method of going “from
herd, to curd, to table,” which Mercurio
and his son Joe coined as the
company’s slogan, is typical of the
region in Italy where the Mercurio
family hails from. It’s a small region
outside of Naples where some of the
most sought-aft er cheese in the world
is made from water buff alo milk in a
town of 1,000 people. Mercurio visited
there and brought the system back
with him, he said.
Inside the kitchen at Mozzareal is a
set of specially designed equipment.
A 600-gallon tank holds the milk between
35 and 37 degrees Fahrenheit
and feeds into a high-temperatureshort
time milk pasteurizing machine.
Mercurio said he attended classes at
Cornell University to get certifi ed as
a pasteurizer by the Department of
Agriculture. There is also a closet that
serves as a “lab” with testing supplies
inside to measure the freshness of the
milk each day.
It’s not water buff alo milk, but the
milk at Mozzareal is sourced from
grass-fed cows from Back to the Future
Farm in Westtown, New York. First
opened in 2012, Back to the Future
Farm uses no growth hormones or
antibiotics on its animals and takes
pride in its fresh, wholesome products,
just like its new partner. Rose Hubbert,
who owns and operates the farm with
her husband and son, said that partnering
with like-minded businesses is
key to both of their success.
“To be successful, you need to do
things diff erent from everybody else,”
Hubbert said. “Small farms need to
hook up with small businesses; that
makes both products phenomenal.”
There is also a large steel vat in the
kitchen that cheese makers Rodolfo
and Gaetano use to hand-stretch the
mozzarella cheese. The cheese makers
demonstrated their craft for the Ridgewood
Times, turning a small batch of
milk curd made earlier that morning
into mozzarella in less than 15 minutes.
Mercurio describes the transformation
from curd to cheese as a “miracle”
while it’s happening. The cheese
makers break the curd up into small
pieces and then splash 180-degree
water over it. This quickly cooks the
curd and it takes on a lava-like consistency
as Gaetano stretches it and
Rodolfo fi lters out the excess water.
The two then portion the mozzarella
into half-pound balls and place them
in a brine for fl avoring for about 20
minutes.
The fi nished product is shiny on the
outside, and it oozes a small amount
of milk when it’s cut into. Mercurio
boasts about its freshness. They also
make fresh pasta from organic durum
semolina every day. Even though the
business has only been open for about
Photo by Ryan Kelley/RIDGEWOOD TIMES
three weeks, Mozzareal is already
selling to restaurants and getting
plenty of walk-in customers, Mercurio
said. He believes he’s fi lling a void
in the New York City food landscape.
“We have more food diversity here
than anywhere else I know in the
world,” Mercurio said. “No one makes
good mozzarella. So I feel that I was
almost challenged to meet that need.”
Getting his business up and running
took about three years, Mercurio
said, but landing in Ridgewood was the
perfect scenario. His commute to work
takes only a few minutes, he found
the perfect facility to accommodate
his special equipment and he’s a “big
believer” in Ridgewood from a small
business perspective. Mercurio said
that the most important ingredient of
all, for any small business, is one of his
most obvious traits.
“People that have passion, are driven
and are not afraid to take a chance,”
Mercurio said. “That’s what really
makes America great, that you can
start a small business here without
getting run over.”
Visit the Ridgewood Times on
Facebook to see the cheese makers at
Mozzareal in action.
