Lady & Larder Brings Twins’ Love of Cheese Back Home

This whole Lady & Larder thing is a lot to digest. 

That becomes clear within 30 seconds of talking with the twin sisters behind it, Sarah and Boo Simms. (Sarah’s the one with the shorter, curlier hair. Boo rocks the longer, straighter locks.)

Their enthusiasm for cheese, wine, art and place borders on giddiness. Their backstory swells with genuine love for family, Carmel Valley and the crazy-making industry that is hospitality. And it all comes with them narrating 100 miles a minute while somehow taking turns and giving the listener a 50 percent chance of tracking who is talking.  

Layer on the sensory barrage that is their kaleidoscopic food boards and it’s officially foodie overload. 

Fifteen things to know about the soon-to-launch Carmel Valley business:

1. Their original Lady & Larder, which started in 2016, now qualifies as a cult hit in Santa Monica for its curated West Coast wines, cheeses and intricate sandwiches. 

2. The twins grew up in Carmel Valley and moved back recently to help care for the dad who raised them in the restaurant industry and begged them to find a different line of work. He didn’t survive cancer, but his legacy endures, and helped bring them back home. “He was our best mentor,” Boo says. “A great guiding light.”

3. Pre-Lady & Larder, Sarah’s very own brand of Instagram crack—highly addictive photos of charcuterie and fruit boards she private-cheffed for rich and famous clients she legally can’t name—led to a lot of personal requests. The complementary combo of Boo’s design and food styling with Sarah’s Cordon Bleu culinary chops (and the eventual addition of their husbands to the team) helped the business blossom.

4. Lady & Larder Carmel Valley edition starts taking cheese board orders this Christmas and opens for walk-ins this spring, with cheese at its literal and figurative heart. Natural wines, tinned fish, local breads and other items radiate out from there. (Sandwiches could come later.) It will occupy the former Sweet Spot at 9 Del Fino Place, not far from the Simms’ childhood home on Los Laureles Grade. “Everything in the shop is complementary to the cheese,” Boo says.

5. For now the twins share a rented home in Carmel-by-the-Sea with their husbands and young kids. “It’s like summer camp,” Sarah says, “and was great for support while taking care of our dad.”

6. The ladies grew up as third-generation restaurant lifers accompanying their dad as he drove from restaurant to restaurant. They were so eager to work they got special permits to start doing dishes at RG Burger at age 14 and washing wetsuits at On the Beach Surf Shop. “We’ve always been entrepreneurial,” Boo says, but they didn’t put together their own collaboration until prepping for Sarah’s wedding. “One of us had the design and visual, the other more culinary. It was like both sides of something.”

7. Sarah loved private chef life, with some big caveats. “I couldn’t talk about what I was doing because of NDAs,” she says. “And I couldn’t serve a wider swath of people.”

8. Travels in Europe inspired a regionally focused shop. “Everywhere we visited, the cheese was made within a 10-mile radius. “It was an almost out of body experience,” Sarah says. “With a huge sense of place.” “‘Why does this taste so good right here?’” Boo adds. Then Sarah continues: “We started thinking, ‘Why don’t I feel that [back home]?’ ‘Can we create something that is a true love note to California?’ We’re basically cheese cheerleaders.” 

9. The right assemblage of morsels carries power. “What we try to do is an art, and the medium is cheese and produce,” Boo says. “At the end of the day it’s shareable. Set one of our boards down and people are drawn to it. It’s a powerful tool. It creates a lot of energy and excitement. Rarely does anyone eat one alone.”

10. Styling is only part of the puzzle. “You can make a beautiful board with ingredients from anywhere,” Sarah says. “But we take time to make sure things are impeccably sourced, real items with integrity that are supporting the best humans.” 

11. Sarah’s experience as a sommelier informs a list she’d been mentally compiling over years, and goes 85 percent California. “All domestic, low intervention, with a focus on farming methods and sourcing,” she says. The same ethos as the cheese, and it’s fun to sell wine and cheese from the same area—what grows together goes together.”

12. Farmers will set aside their atypical shaped fruits and vegetables because they know L&L wants them. “We love whimsy things like flowering herbs and leaving stems and skins on fruit, basically, not over-processing them so that you can still see and experience their natural beauty,” Sarah says. “We love that when we look at our boards, we can tell you what time of year the photo was taken because they are always very reflective of the specific time of year that they were made.”

13. The ways Carmel Valley has changed dovetails with their strengths. “The biggest change in the village since we were kids is probably the amount of wine tasting rooms,” Sarah says. “We hope that Lady & Larder will be able to support those businesses, offering cheese that pairs well with local wine.” She namechecks spots they’ve frequented since they were youngsters, including Taqueria del Valle and Cafe Rustica. “There are some really wonderful businesses that already make CV such an alluring place, it is a real dream for us to be joining them,” she adds. 

14. They are also quick to rattle off area purveyors they enjoy working with: Andy’s Orchard, Frog Hollow, Munak Ranch, B&R Farms, Smit Farms, County Line, Stepladder Creamery, Central Coast Creamery, Like Family (formerly Other Brother) and Ad Astra Bread. “We feel most alive in the moments where we are building new relationships with local makers, growers and our future customers,” Sarah says. “When it comes to our business, these relationships are the true secret sauce. They are also the most joyful parts of the job—the relationships are what make this industry so wondrous.”

15. Creative food play between sisters around food began with toddler games they called “restaurant” and “sandwich shop.” “Working together is a rainbow tornado of ideas,” Boo says. We finish each other’s sentences a lot. We also trust each other a lot. We’ve been creating dream businesses and playing with ideas in the kitchen since we were 2 or 3 years old.” 

More at Lady & Larder’s website and Instagram feed.