Kurt Mullican – Memphis Flyer

Partiers Get Sneak Peek at Grey’s Cheese, which opens May 18th

Grey’s Fine Cheeses will open May 18th, but guests at the May 16th soft opening of Jackie Mau’s and Kurt Mullican’s new shop at 709 South Mendenhall were among the first to see the beautifully designed space and taste equally beautiful charcuterie boards loaded with meat and cheese.

Grey’s will feature cheese cut to order and already made or custom-made cheese boards. And they will teach people who are bit squeamish when it comes to cheese about how to pair cheese with wine and food. They also will feature weekly menu items, including cheese plates and food specials. Customers can dine inside or on the patio.

“It felt amazing seeing how everyone there had contributed to our vision of Grey’s, from our very first customers and all those who participated in the building project,” Jackie says. “Kurt and I wanted to show our gratitude together in making our dream come true.”

Asked how he felt about seeing their shop come together, Mullican says, “It was a pretty humbling moment. Ever since I was a kid I wanted a place to get great cheese and unique product. And to see that we created all this, it was incredible.”

Adds Jackie, “Kurt and I wanted to show our gratitude tother in making our dream come true. And we can’t wait to host our Memphis turophiles.”

(Photos by Michael Donahue) Jackie Mau and Kurt Mullican of Grey’s Fine Cheeses

Remarking on cheese made to resemble Monet paintings, Avon Pathak says, “You wouldn’t want to cut that. It’s too pretty to eat.”

Pathak knows “pretty.” Owner of Domus Interiors, Pathak was the interior designer of Grey’s.

“They had visited some fromageries in Paris,” Pathak says. “And when they came to me they said, ‘We want to achieve that.’ When I did some research, they all seemed to be ‘of the Earth’ and had been there since the dawn of the time. A lot of wood, a lot of great use of shelving, and a lot of great areas for display.”

Pathak visited France a couple of years ago, but she also did online research of European fromageries, including some in Paris and Italy. “Those all are very timeless looking.”

But, she says, “I wanted to bring theirs into this century, and give it a very modern kick.”

Avni Pathak was interior designer of Grey’s Fine Cheeses

She “used the concept” of the Grey’s logo color. “And that’s the blue you see everywhere.”

Pathak, who has a bachelor’s degree in interior design, also learned visual merchandising from working for several years for a luxury goods company. So, she also stocked the shelves at Grey’s. “It has to be arranged beautifully because you are a high-end specialty store. You are not a grocery store.”

And, she says, “They have the most divine products.”

Pathak and Matthew Wrage, owner of CityWood, collaborated on the design of the tables, bar, and shelving, all of which Wrage built. “Oh, my gosh, he is such a passionate craftsman. We collaborated so perfectly with this. He just felt what I wanted to do. And for a designer, that is a dream team. It was my design and he ran with it.”

Says Wrage: “She came to me with a digital rendering of what it is she wanted and I took her digital rendering and designed and built it. If we took her digital rendering and compared it to what we got, it’s spot on.”

The dramatic 10-and-a-half foot bar is made of “two slabs from one magnolia tree,” Wrage says. “And then we did what — in our world — is called an ‘epoxy river.’ So, there is a mossy, smoky gray river that runs between the two slabs. It’s all in the a style that is happening right now. A lot of epoxy rivers are happening now. They wanted to do a very large specialty piece of an epoxy river dining serving area there.”

The shelving is made with iron and hickory and pecan wood. “The tables are also live edge pecan from locally-sourced trees,” Wrage says.

The iron was made at Iron & Design, which is owned by Wrage and Zach Shoe.

Wrage, who attended with Kirsten Cannon, also was impressed when he entered the shop during the party. “It was beautiful. It was such and amazing spread. And they did such a great job on visual presentation of the whole place.”

Downing’s cheese and charcuterie boards fell under the category of “too beautiful to eat.” And, for a while, it seemed like guests were afraid to touch them, but, after someone got the ball rolling, cheese and meat began to disappear.

One of Downing’s cheeseboards included 24-month aged Mimolette French cheese, 12-month old raw milk, Manchebo DOP, Beemster young goat Gouda, Beecher’s Reserve four-year old clothbound cheddar. The charcuterie board included Bresaola, Capicola, and duck prosciutto. House ferments were sour pickles and spicy mustard. His dishes included whipped Bellwether sheep’s milk ricotta with lemon, pickled berries, brioche toast, and torn herbs. Another dish was house-made naan bread with handmade feta from Meredith dairy in Australia, cherry tomato confit, arugula and walnut pesto.

Wine was Pasqua pinot noir.

Kenya Arquello with Pamapas Floral did the flowers. She attended with her husband, Oseas.

Anneliese and Dr. Arie Szatkowski were among the guests at the Grey’s Fine Cheeses soft opening.

Grey’s is part of Williamsburg Village, which is comprised of “Southeast and Southwest parcels of Mendendahll from the Half Shell down to Gus’s and (across the street) Southall all the way down to the Torchy’s,” says Jonathan Aur with the developer, Boyle Investment Co.

Asked what he thought about what Mau and Mullican did with the approximately 1,300-square-foot-space, Aur says, “I think they nailed it. The vision they described to me eight months ago when we started this process and then walking into this space Sunday was pretty wild because it was almost transformative from the conversation to reality. It was really neat. The details, the layout, the product, everything, was just beyond what we could have imagined.”

Jackie Mau and Kurt Mullican of Greys Fine Cheese & Entertaining

Jackie Mau and Kurt Mullican want you to say, “cheese.”

Mau and Mullican will open Greys Fine Cheese & Entertaining in February. “You can come in and buy cheese cut to order,” Mau says. “You can buy a cheese board that we will have readily available for you. You can custom order one.”

But their main goal is “education,” Mau says. They want to teach people about cheese. In the meantime, Mau and Mullican will present dinners featuring food and drink paired with cheese.

“A lot of times people will approach a cheese counter at a supermarket and they really just don’t know how pair things,” Mau says.

And, she says, “We also host private events in people’s homes.”

The first dinner, “Cheese, Food, and Cocktails,” will be be held October 29th at the new SOBeast restaurant owned by Ed and Brittany Cabigao, in the old Interim restaurant on Sanderlin. That dinner already is sold out, but the next one is slated to be held in late November at the new Hen House Restaurant.

Their business is an offshoot of Mau’s Airbnb. She used to make cheeseboards for her guests. “Friends found out about the cheeseboards. They ordered holiday boards. Things were going great.”

After returning from a trip to Paris, Mau realized Memphis needed a custom cheese shop. She then found the perfect location in the Williamsburg Shopping Center on Mendenhall near Poplar.

It’s important for people to buy cheese now, Mau says. “Because of COVID, the artisan cheese business has been hit hard. They lost 40 to 52 percent in sales. Animals are still making milk, but people aren’t buying.”

In addition to co-owning the business, Mullican also is the “cheesemonger” for Greys. “It was a term coined in the United States in the early ‘80s,” he says. “They didn’t have a name for a sommelier for cheese.”

The name, Mullican says, “kind of jokingly took off. Now it’s a worldwide accepted term.”

He’s been fascinated with cheese for most of his life. “It’s one of the earliest forms of food preservation. It’s an art. But it’s also survival. People used it to preserve food. So they could keep milk longer so they could live.”

For their first dinner, Mullican collaborated with SOB executive chef Anthony Fenech and mixologist Wesley Atteberry.

“The theme is ‘America can hold its own against any country in the world when it comes to cheese,’” Mullican says. “Meaning: Even with all of the pasteurized milk guidelines we live by here, we create and innovate as well as Italy, France, and Holland.”

To give an example of how they will be doing their cheese dinners, Mullican described the pairings at SOB The first dinner will feature five courses, all paired with cheese, food, and cocktails. Mullican will talk about the cheese for 15 minutes before each course. During his talk, guests will receive an ounce and a half of the cheese featured in that course. “So they can taste it immediately.”

They will begin with Kunik, a goat cheese with added cow cream from New York. “It’s cakey and goaty in the center with a really rich, tangy cream line, thanks to the Jersey cow cream that’s added to it.

“The dish is going to be coffee roasted heirloom carrots with a coconut milk mousseline, orange-infused honey, and candied walnuts.”

The cocktail will be the “Bamboo,” which is dry vermouth and “a coconut fat-washed fino sherry.”

The second dish will be “a special kind of pecorino. This one is going be an oro antico. It is an aged sheep milk cheese.”

The cheese is made in Tuscany. “They rub olive oil baths all over it during its aging process.”

The flavor is “olive oily, sheepy, nutty, tangy.”

The cheese will be grated over the top of a wild mushroom ravioli. This will be paired with a “Martinez” cocktail. “A pistachio-infused sweet vermouth, London dry gin, dry curaçao, and maraschino liqueur.”

The third course will feature “eposes,” which is “a French washed rind cheese that dates back to the 1500s. It’s a stinky cheese, but really, really velvety on the inside. Almost runny. With strong flavors of cultured butter, cooked milk, and just a mineral saltiness from the rind. We’re going to do a pickled grape preserve strawberry and a marmalade with that.”

The cocktail will be a “Fall Break” — “Apple brandy, Navy strength gin, slo gin, simple syrup, and lemon.”

“Pleasant Ridge Reserve” will be served in the fourth course. Mullican describes it as “an Alpine-style cheese that is the most awarded cheese in American history. Complex, but very fruity on the end and real nutty and buttery on the front.”

This will be paired with “a pear and pork belly brioche with melted Pleasant Ridge kind of blow torched on top of it.”

The cocktail will be a “French 125,” which he describes as “a bacon-infused brandy with lemon, demerara syrup and prosecco to get some bubbles in there.”

The star of the show will be the Rogue River Blue, which was voted the “Best Cheese in the World” at the World Cheese Championships in 2019 in Bergamo, Italy, Mullican says. “It won out of 3,800 different cheeses.”

Rogue River Blue is “wrapped in sirrah leaves soaked in pear brandy. It tastes like the Oregon River Valley. It’s sweet toward the rind where the pear brandy is kind of soaked in. And as you get to the middle it’s sweet, it’s piquant, crystalline. Just expect waves of flavor with this cheese.”

It will be served with “a dry-aged beef with pink peppercorns, and a bleu cheese crumbled on top.”

The cocktail will be a “a clarified New York Sour — bourbon, lemon, simple syrup, and a white port wine float.”

Probably an unfair question, but if he could choose one cheese as his favorite, what would Mullican pick? “If I had one of these to sit down with the rest of my life every day, I would probably go with like a Red Hawk by Cowgirl Creamery. It’s a washed rind cheese and it’s very mushroomy. And very kind of brine-y, almost. It tastes of boiled peanuts. It really does.”

So, where does the name “Greys” come from in Greys Fine Cheese & Entertaining? “It’s a play on words that was developed by Kurt,” Mau says. “It’s the idea of grazing around a cheese board. Just kind of enjoying and grazing on a cheese board.”