The Butchery Zeitgiest rolls on...

Last week, the New York Times had a doozy of an article about hip young butchers. While I can't get as worked up about it as Larbo does, the author doesn't do much of a service to the people she's writing about. I don't want to come across as the pot calling the kettle black. I am, of course, one of the "young would be butchers who want internships" and I have had the pleasure of working with and learning from several of the folks in this article, but I don't miss the irony of butchering being compared to indie rock. Been there done that, you know? Anyway, cheers to Melanie from Avedano's who says: “We never did it to be rock stars. For me, it was a way to promote small farms and certain fish. That’s it.”

As an antidote to all that young hipness, check out my photos of old school meat markets and deli's in New York.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Marlow & Daughters

Tom Mylan and the crew at Marlow & Daughters have been getting a lot of well deserved praise since they opened. Marlow & Daughters is the sister (ahem) butcher shop to the Marlow & Sons, Diner and Bonita Restaurants. While I was in New York, I spent a couple of days hanging around the shop, doing my best to take pictures without getting in the way. One of the things that immediately jumped out at me is that their is no back room at Marlow & Daughters. Everything from breaking beef quarters to making Sausage is done in plain view of anyone who happens to be in the store. I asked Tom if customers ever get grossed out by this, and he said it has happened a few times, but that most of their customers like the transparency. As Tom said, this isn't the Butcher Shop for everyone. Customers looking for enough Beef Tenderloin to serve 15, or for boneless skinless chicken breast aren't going to get what they're looking for here.

Bringing it in...

... and breaking it down.

What Marlow & Daughters is, is a great butcher shop featuring meat from local farms that are working hard to raise their animals the right way. The transparency that comes from butchering right in front of the customer runs through the shop and extends to the farmers who are supplying it. If you ask what farm your steak came from, they can tell you. And if you call up the farm, you can probably go visit.


In addition to some mighty fine looking cuts of meat, they also sausage, some charcuterie items, and a small amount of prepared or ready to cook items (the marinated duck heart skewers got my attention!) In addition, they have a great selection of artisinal products, including some of the best American cured meats, including Fra' Mani, Benton Hams, La Quercia and Salumeria Biellese. Mix in some local eggs, dairy and produce and and you have a great shop with a great sense of community. While I was there a guy came by with some homemade mozzarella to share and get feedback. This is definitely the kind of butcher I'd like to have in my neighborhood.

South Bay Sausage Tour, pt 2

After eating lunch at Neto's, we headed up to Mountain view to check out Dittmers Gourmet Meats & Wurst-Haus. Holy Crap! Dittmer's is out of control, they have an incredible variety of sausages, smoked meats and cured meats. They make everything on sight except for their Italian Salumi and proscuitto because, well, Dittmer is German not Italian, and he's go the accent to prove it.

Dittmer!

After seeing the incredible variety of products they were selling, I was not surprised to learn that they break whole hogs at Dittmer's. It's clear that nothing goes to waste; Head Cheese, Liverwurst, smoked Hocks, if it comes from a pig then Dittmer will make it taste awesome and sell it to you.

Dittmer's has more going on than just Pork Sausage though. They also are a full service butcher shop with fresh cuts of beef, pork, lamb, veal and poultry and they are a full service deli. Unfortunately I was still stuffed from lunch, but I did grab a landjagger, some beef jerky and some sausage. The landjagger was nice and smokey. The grind was coarser than I expected which gave it a hardy texture. The jerky was wonderfully smokey and rich with just the right amount of sweetness. The sausage, unfortunately, went in the freezer, but I'll report back when it gets eaten.

I'm not so original...

A few months back my wife Natalie gave me a look of shock and horror and said "You want to become a butcher?!" To be fair, it's not unusual for her to shoot me looks of shock and horror, and they don't necessarily mean that she is actually shocked or horrified. Still, we had only been eating meat for a couple months after years of vegetarianism and veganism, and this was quite a bomb I was dropping. I though that being a former vegan turned wannabe butcher would make me a bit of an oddity; it might even give me a foot in the door with the butchers I hoped to learn from. It turns out, though, that far from being an oddity, I'm actually a bit late to the party. This article in Gourmet Magazine profiles a number of former vegetarians turned butchers. I have some ideas about what is behind this mini trend, but I'm going to wait a while before making any bold pronouncements on my nascent blog.



Nonetheless, I am undeterred by my lack of originality, and I'm setting out on a journey to visit, and hopefully learn from, some of the best butchers in the country. I'll be chronicling my travels as well as my experiments at home with meat, and occasionally other food groups as well. Oh yeah, the name refers to the two ingredients that can transform any number of foods, most notably cabbage and pork, into some of the tastiest morsels on the planet.

Photo of Fleisher's Meats courtesy of The Green Fork.