At Zingerman's Creamery, the Cheese Is the Easy Part
Next door to the Bakehouse on Plaza Drive, a small operation turns Michigan milk into some of the best fresh cheese and gelato in the state.
If you read my piece on the Bakehouse, you already know Plaza Drive. South side of Ann Arbor, near the airport, commercial buildings and parking lots, no charm to speak of. The Bakehouse is at 3711. Walk next door to 3723 and you'll find the Creamery, which has been making cheese here since 2001. The two operations share the same unglamorous stretch of asphalt, and together they produce an absurd percentage of what makes eating in Ann Arbor as good as it is.
The Creamery is smaller than the Bakehouse. Where the Bakehouse fills a large production space and ships bread nationally, the Creamery operates on a more intimate scale. You walk into a retail area that's maybe a third the size of the Bakehouse's front room. A glass case holds wedges and rounds of cheese. A gelato freezer sits along the wall. Behind the counter, through a window, you can see the production room where the cheese gets made. The whole place smells like warm milk and cultures.
The Cheese
The Creamery's lineup splits into two categories: fresh cheeses that turn around fast and aged cheeses that take months. The fresh side is where most people start, and for good reason.
Cream cheese is the gateway. Zingerman's cream cheese has ruined grocery store cream cheese for me, and I don't say that to be dramatic. It's tangier, denser, and tastes like something that was actually made from cream rather than assembled from stabilizers. Spread it on a Bakehouse bagel and you understand why people drive to Plaza Drive on a Saturday morning. A tub runs about $7.
Fromage blanc is the cheese I buy most often. It's a fresh, spreadable French-style cheese with a clean, mild tang. I use it on toast, stir it into pasta, eat it with honey. It's the kind of ingredient that quietly improves everything it touches without announcing itself. About $8 for a container.
Fresh mozzarella gets made by hand in small batches. You can watch them stretch it if you time your visit right. It's milky, soft, with that pull-apart quality that store-bought mozzarella tries and fails to replicate. I've put it on pizza, sliced it over tomatoes in August, and eaten it plain with salt and olive oil. All three were good. The plain version might have been the best. Around $9 a ball.
The aged side is smaller but serious. Manchester, a washed-rind cheese named after the nearby town, has a pungent, earthy funk that grows as it ages. It's not for everyone. I like it with a glass of red wine and nothing else. They also make a Detroit Street Brick Cheese, a semi-soft cheese designed for Detroit-style pizza. It melts into that lacey, crispy edge that defines the style.
Prices across the cheese case range from about $7 to $20 depending on the type and size. Not cheap, but the quality is apparent from the first bite. These are cheeses made from Michigan milk in a room you can see from the counter. That transparency is not marketing. It's the actual production model.
The Gelato
I did not expect the gelato to be as good as it is. I walked in for cheese the first time and left with a cup of gelato that changed my afternoon plans. The Creamery makes gelato in-house using the same Michigan dairy that goes into the cheese, and the difference between this and most commercial gelato is immediate. It's denser, creamier, and the flavors taste like the thing they claim to be.
Toasted Coconut has actual coconut flavor, not the sunscreen-adjacent version you get elsewhere. Chocolate Shovel is dark and intense without being bitter. I had a Salted Caramel on my last visit that was good enough to make me stand in the parking lot finishing it before I got in the car. They rotate flavors, so what's in the case changes, but the base quality stays consistent.
A single scoop is about $5, a double around $7. In a city with Blank Slate Creamery doing excellent work downtown, the Creamery's gelato holds its own with a different approach. Where Blank Slate leans into creative flavors and a shop atmosphere, the Creamery's gelato feels like an extension of the dairy operation. Less playful, more fundamental. Both are good. They're solving different problems.
The Ecosystem
The Creamery supplies cheese to the Deli, the Roadhouse, and other Zingerman's businesses. When you order a grilled cheese at the Roadhouse or cream cheese on a bagel at the Deli, there's a good chance it came from 3723 Plaza Drive. Like the Bakehouse, the Creamery functions as infrastructure for the rest of the Zingerman's community, producing ingredients that show up on plates across the organization without most customers knowing the source.
But the Creamery also sells to restaurants outside the Zingerman's network. Their mozzarella and cream cheese appear on menus around Ann Arbor, usually without attribution. This is the same quiet supply-chain influence I described in the Bakehouse piece: a production operation on an industrial side street, feeding quality ingredients into a city's restaurant ecosystem.
Aubrey Thomason is credited as the founding cheesemaker, building the program from scratch. In a Community of Businesses built on deep craft knowledge, the Creamery is perhaps the purest expression of that idea. One product, made well, from local ingredients, by people who have devoted years to learning the science and feel of milk becoming cheese.
Plaza Drive, Again
I wrote in the Bakehouse piece that Plaza Drive tells you something about what these businesses are. No foot traffic, no Instagram appeal, just production facilities with retail counters bolted on. The Creamery is even less assuming than the Bakehouse. It's easy to miss entirely if you're not looking for it. The sign is modest. The parking lot is shared. You walk in, buy your cheese, maybe get a gelato, and drive home.
That lack of performance is the point. The Creamery doesn't need a charming storefront because the cheese does the talking. The fromage blanc on your morning toast, the mozzarella on your summer pizza, the gelato you eat standing in a parking lot on a Tuesday afternoon. None of it requires atmosphere. It just requires milk, cultures, time, and someone who knows what they're doing.
Zingerman's Creamery is at 3723 Plaza Dr, Ann Arbor. Open daily.