After becoming vegan, there was only one food Brogyn Gage really missed—cheese.
Her journey to find a tasty plant-based alternative led her to create her own business: Long Beach’s only artisanal vegan cheese pop-up shop, O’LaVi.
“It really was just me trying to find a way to satisfy my own cravings for vegan cheese,” Gage said. “And I realized that there was a market to start selling all of these vegan cheeses that I was researching, and finding out about, and taste-testing for myself.”
Gage has been vegan for the past six years, but it wasn’t until she was stuck at home during the pandemic in 2020 that she had time to seriously look for a source of quality vegan cheese.
She began by trying to make vegan cheese herself, but realized there is a steep learning curve, and it would take years for her to develop a recipe she’s happy with. In the meantime, she began buying and taste-testing vegan cheeses from various businesses across the country.
“I realized that there really wasn’t much of a market for artisanal, good vegan cheese in Long Beach,” Gage said. “And I thought that was really surprising because Long Beach has such a great vegan community and so many great vegan options. But I realized that there’s really not too many places, not just in Long Beach, but even in like, LA or Orange County, to get artisanal vegan cheese.”
After having a hard time finding what she was looking for in the nearby area, in the summer of 2022 Gage decided to step up and become Long Beach and Signal Hill’s local vegan cheesemonger.
Every Thursday, Gage sets up shop at the Bixby Knolls Farmers Market with a spread of logs, wedges and whole wheels of nut-based vegan cheeses that mimic the taste of brie, pimento, pepperjack, chèvre, gruyere and more. She also has an online store where customers can place orders to later pick up in Long Beach or Signal Hill.
When choosing which products O’LaVi sells, Gage looks for vegan cheeses from small businesses that meet her standards for taste.
“I want it to be super tasty and I’m really picky with what I carry because I feel like there’s such a negative taste in people’s mouth with what they think vegan cheese tastes like, because they’ve really only had vegan cheese when it started coming out like five to 10 years ago, or what they’ve had only in the grocery store,” Gage said. “So a lot of people haven’t had a really great experience with vegan cheese.”
O’LaVi offers around 20 different vegan cheeses. Gage claims she can win over any non-vegan with the cashew-based Barn Cat by Philadelphia-based company Bandit. Among her personal favorites, she lists a cave-aged imitation of Brie cheese by Austin-based Rebel Cheese, complete with a natural rind.
“They’re all like my little cheese babies, so it’s hard to pick one,” Gage said.
O’LaVi is at the Bixby Knolls Farmers Market, located at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and E 46th Street, every Thursday from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m, and at Long Beach Meatless Mondays at Trademark Brewing, located at 233 E Anaheim St., from from 4:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. To place online orders for pick up in Long Beach and Signal Hill, visit o-lavi.com.
[A previous version of this article said that the imitation brie cheese referenced by Gage was made by Bandit. The imitation brie cheese was made by Rebel Cheese. The Signal Tribune regrets this error.]