What do you get the butcher who has everthing?
Dear Reader,
We apologize. We let you down. We admit it.
The Gold Coast Mail, a paper in Australia, ran a contest whereby willing ladies could win a date with a dashing young butcher — apparently with a giant loin, judging by the subtle photo used to promote the campaign (now we see why GofAG’s Rachelle likes Aussies so much)– and we did not alert you in time to apply. Yes, ladies, applications for “The Butcher Wants a Wife” have closed.
We’re sorry.
Choptank gets chopped
Sam Sifton goose-egged the big little fish fry that could from the mid-Atlantic. He calls the burger “decent.” But not one word about the drinks, and Sifton is asshole enough to say that “there’s no John Waters to the place,” as if everything he learned about Maryland he learned from Net Flix.
Choptank is for lubbers
Looks like the Choptank burger is making a name for itself. Today Time Out New York wrote a glowing review of the burger at the Chesapeake Bay-style fish shack (not so much the rest of the menu). As counter-intuitive as this sounds, we can believe it. While we’ve only sampled the seafood offerings there (based on the old “thing to get” adage, but apparently the thing to get is the burger. Whodathunkit?) and, of course, the bartender’s spin on the Dark and Stormy, called here, The Mildly Inclement and made with Jamiacan Appleton Estate rum in place of the traditional Goslings (and the change will do you good).
We’d sidle up to the bar, either the actual one or the raw one, and pick and choose and drink through the menu, in lieu of sitting in the nondescript dining room, which still has not exorcised the blandness of its previous resident, Bar-Q. And when we return, as found as we are fine old Mid-Atlantic cuisine, we are going to have to try this burger.
“Needless to say, there’s a signature hamburger,” says TONY, because it is apparently impossible to even open a seafood restaurant without one these days (another menu staple that is not overlooked is fried chicken — which also gets high marks). TONY didn’t think much of the seafood, though it sounds as if they caught the kitchen on a bad night, and pays its highest praise to the aforementioned burger, calling it “thick and juicy with aged cheddar, pickled pepper mayo, sweet onion marmalade and an outstanding buttered sesame-seed bun.” Ahoy.
Sam Sifton rates the place in tomorrow’s New York Times, so we shall follow the developing story of the burger by the bay then. Eater predicts a solid onespot, but points out that Robert Sietsema “loved it.”
Odds-On: Handicapping the Chefs of Cochon 555
In just one month, five chefs, five heritage-bred pigs, and five winemakers will converge on Pier 60 in Manhattan. Yes, swine-lovers, It’s time for Cochon 555, the traveling cooking competition which we’ve likened to an ATP for pork, which takes place on March 21. (In a back-to-back porkfest, the Boston Cochon goes off the very next weekend.) Tom Mylan of Brooklyn’s Meat Hook will be on hand as VIP butcher and Ryan Farr of San Francisco’s 4505 Meats, the organization’s “resident butcher,” will also be there, so we expect meat demonstrations.
This year the battle moves to Pier 60, from its surprisingly comfy home at Hiro ballroom, where last January Fatty Crab’s Corwin Kave took top honors. This time around he’ll be fighting under the Fatty ‘Cue mantle — and the restaurant may even be open by the time the competition comes around this year.
Kave will have his work cut out for him in defending his “Prince of Porc” title: The competition is fierce and this will be a contest to be watched. The winner of each Cochon is chosen by a panel of 20 judges, with a separate people’s choice winner determined by popular vote (which, in our opinion, allows chefs to stack the judges’ plates and save the most daring constructions for them, though most abide by gentleman’s rules of conduct and strive for equal representation on both sides of the table). The winner will go on to compete in the Grand Cochon against the winners from other cites.
This is the toughest field of chefs we’ve ever seen at a Cochon. There are a lot intangibles at play, though. The winner is not always the one with the most stars, or the best knife skills, or most time spent playing in the mud at farms. Herewith, the Butcher handicaps the odds on this year’s Cochon New York.
Corwin Kave, Fatty ‘Cue
Kave has his title on the line here and will bring all he’s got. The Fatty team is behind him as evidenced by the crew proffering the Tiger Special (Tiger beer, shot of whiskey, shot of pickle juice) to those who show support for their chef in the Cochon. Fatty ‘Cue has been in development for what seems like forever, so Kave has had his fair share of practice on the whole hog — what amounts to a solid year of training (and word is it’s paid off) — all of which gives him an excellent shot at repeating.
Odds: 3-1
Mark Ladner, Del Posto
Ladner is making a return trip to the Cochon and was barely edged out last year by Kave in a tightly contested battle for porc prowess. He must have been itching for a rematch after seeing the burly Crab crew take the stage last year, PBR cans in hand. The refined and reserved Ladner somehow made his bones in Batali kitchens, so he surely brings an interesting mix of brass and artistry to his work. As reserved as Ladner seems on the outside, he also has an edge to him. The fires of revenge, coupled with his kitchen craftmanship, could put him over the top.
Odds: 5-1
Adam Kaye, Blue Hill at Stone Barns
We must preface this by saying that Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns is one of our favorite restaurants and one of a very few reasons we can find to go up to Westchester. Kaye, who comes from a long line of butchers — his great-grandfather was a butcher and his grandfather ran a butcher-supply shop — began working in the kitchen at Stone Barns 10 years ago as the “meat cook” and worked his way up to chef. A lot depends on what pig he’s assigned (this has not yet been determined), as he’s most familiar with working with the Stone Barns house-raised Berkshire. If he pulls the Berkshire it could be a walk.
Odds: 5-2
Gavin Kaysen, Café Boulud
We’re not sure about this one, to be honest with you. For starters, Kaysen has been on television, which is a little suspicious. And he told Food & Wine, in his 2007 “Best New Chefs” interview, that spoons, his favorite kitchen tool, are “like the ultra-utility knife.” Hmm. It’s hard to believe that a man who came to fame as a chef at El Bizcocho, a restaurant in a golf resort and spa in California (the land of fruits and nuts) and thinks that spoons are like knives stands much of a chance of prevailing here. Though he certainly has the chops and could pull off an upset.
Odds: 10-1
Gold Medal Gluttony
Wednesday night in Vancouver, as everyone who bothered to open their eyes this morning knows, 23-year-old Shaun White became the first person to ever win two consecutive gold medals in the snowboarding halfpipe competition. Granted, the sport has only been worthy of the Olympics since 1998 and its athletes are still considered — as one grouchy old man on MSNBC’s disgustingly bad “Morning Joe” put it — “the same hippie kids who show up on your door smelling like pot and asking for food.”
Well, this particular stoner kid won his second gold medal by careening off the 22-foot-tall halfpife, performing two front flips, twisting 3-and-a-half times and then landing. On his feet. And since he was the one to invent the maneuver (and the only person to execute it successfully so far) White of course gets the all-important naming rights. And for this trick, White chose “The Tomahawk.” Don’t think about it too much. These are snowboarders we’re talking about.
White explains that he came up with the name for the trick during his strenuous training regimen: “I was eating two steaks. The first one was in New York and it was called the Double Eagle. I thought this is an amazing name for a trick. Then I was in Aspen and had a steak call the Tomahawk. It was like a big-boned Tomahawk, 30 oz. I finished it.” (Now that deserves a gold medal.)
While it does seem a little strange that the restaurants gave such creative names to their steaks (then again, maybe it’s just the weed speaking — perhaps we should ask White if the steaks also tried to talk to him) we are pleased that such fine cuts of beef both inspired and most likely gave the so-called “Animal” of snowboarding the strength he needed to accomplish this remarkable feat.
And for White, the gluttony doesn’t stop with the Gold: “The owner [of the Aspen restaurant] said if I play video games with his son, I’m going to have free Tomahawks for life.” That poor child.
Expense-a-Steak: Eat Meat, Defraud Your Company
Manhattan meat temple Maloney & Porcelli has devised an ingenious recession-proof way to continue eating white-tablecloth lunches on your company, while your company will merely believe you’re just buying glue sticks. Type the cost of your lunch into their Expense-a-Steak generator and the site will pull receipts from innocuous spots like Staples and taxi cabs that add up to the cost of your lunch and compile them into an easy to print PDF. This is the kind of meat innovation we like to see.
Hill Country’s Feed Your Face Challenge done in by PEDs?
The Hill Country Feed Your Face Challenge ended this Sunday as the restaurant posted to its Twitter feed this weekend.
The challenge (PDF) was to eat a full-on Hill Country feast in under 60 minutes and then the meal was free. The main obstacle (to us at least) was the cupcake required for desert. Our first thought, when we heard the challenge was open to anyone who asked for it, was, why don’t the homeless storm the restaurant?
The tale of the tape for the meat was as follows:
1⁄2 lb. of Moist Brisket
1⁄2 lb. of Lean Brisket
1⁄2 lb. of Beef Shoulder
1⁄2 lb. of Prime Rib
Throw in a couple of sides and a soda and it seems like a pretty easy feat to get your Polaroid up on HC’s gluttony wall of shame “Wall of Cue.” The “winnner” would also receive a hat and T-shirt.
So what happened? Was it too easy?
Consider this: This week’s New York Mag has an infograph comparing the pounds of smoked meat one would need to finish (2) with the fastest time an especially amped up patron finished the challenge (8 minutes).
While it might take some sort of performance enhancing drug (such as a package of Perky Jerky) to achieve such a spectacularly disgusting time, the challenge seemed flawed, and we said as much to Hill Country. What was needed as part of the challenge was a beer component — perhaps two pitchers, or a pint of everything the joint has on tap. This would truly have upped the anti.
There’s still time, Hill Country. Do it right.
Twenty-five years later, is Meat still Murder?
This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Smith’s seminal chart-topping album, “Meat is Murder,” which came out on Valentine’s Day in 1985. On the title track the famously vegetarian Morrisey bemoans the slaughtering of “beautiful creatures,” the fanciful frying of flesh, the joyful carving of calves and the festive slicing of holiday meat-treats. As for that farmstand bacon the Butcher had for breakfast on Sunday that “smelled just as good as it looked? “Kitchen aromas aren’t very homely /It’s not “comforting”, cheery or kind /It’s sizzling blood and the unholy stench of murder.”
But 1985 was a long time ago — back in the day of feed lots and slaughterhouses. Back when the average consumer thought of meat as something that arrived on the earth ground or cubed and wrapped in plastic. The original Times (UK) review of the album called “Meat is Murder” the Smiths’ “most disturbing song to date” and “enough to make anyone think twice as they survey the freezer cabinet in [the chain supermarket] Sainsbury’s.” But now we are educated, aware and compassionate. Are we still killers? Everywhere (okay, mainly in New York and San Francisco and possibly a few pockets in LA where they don’t drink human blood for fun) conscientious carnivores are answering Morrisey’s rhetorical question: “Do you know how animals die?” with a proud and resounding, “Yes We Do! (And we think this makes it okay to eat them!)”
Would Morrisey feel any different if he knew the Butcher’s bacon had been purchased from the local farmer market and carved off the ass of a free range, grass fed, heritage swine from less than 100 miles away?
Not likely. Because he is not one of those faux vegetarians who, in the organic locavore whole-animal-utilization craze have found all the rationalization they need to dust off their steak knives. Or go wrist-deep in a gallon of pigs blood as the case may be. Morrissey would likely tell all those spareitarians, flexitarians and weekend tree huggers that anyway you choose to slice that happy heifer, it’s still murder.
Mike Joyce, the Smiths’ drummer, told the Times Online that it was this song (and not apparently Morrisey’s constant nagging) that finally pushed him into the herbivorism. “All Morrissey’s ‘You shouldn’t be eating that’ just washed over me, but the lyrics of the song just got to me. I’ve been a vegetarian ever since and so is my wife.” (Because, before the song, what? He thought that meat grew on trees?)
But even those who were so swayed by Morrissey’s bellowing “MURDER” have to chuckle a little bit at the heifer angst. Because we can all laugh at ourselves. Especially if we are Morrissey
Foodista? Gag them with a spoon.
First off, the pitch for the Foodista Best of the Food Blogs Cookbook sounds like a bad self-publishing come-on:
“Have you dreamed of being published in print? Want to see your writing in a book?”
And with that, we lost our lunch.
We are all for “blogs to books,” or blooks as they are somewhat annoyingly called. We see the impulse-buy nirvana of “This is Why Your Fat” and even think there is a place for the best online food writing to be curated and published, but this contest — and they are calling it a contest — sounds like some ’50s-housewife-entering-a-radio-jingle-to-win-a-prize bullshit.
But really, what more can you expect from a website that willingly calls itself Foodista? Unless they are a liberation army of Nicaraguan rebel chefs they should change that name immediately.
The idea for the Foodista cookblook, apparently came out of a blog-to-books panel at Foodista’s International Food Blogger Conference (which we won’t even get into), and it should have stayed there.
So we now have a bunch of people ripping recipes out of cookbooks and cooking them, putting the recipes on their blogs, and now they are coming back into book form? No wonder publishing is dying.
Full Meat-al Jacket (and pants, and bow tie)
An alert reader who has been to some very dark places (because the All Occasion Bacon Tuxedo is clearly something one picks up in a Vietnamese brothel) sends in this treat for those of you into meat pants or meat jackets, this is the whole shebang: a full meat suit.
The coup de grace is, of course, the bacon bow tie.
Granted it’s just bacon print, but the package does promise a bonus bacon sent. And you know what that does to the ladies, right? Just look at that call girl in the background — she is about to devour our man on that stone cemetery bench where he lounges, and they’ll writhe together draped in that velour curtain all night long.
OD’ing on Perky Jerky, the breakfast of champions
Remember those old Folgers commercials where they secretly replaced the real coffee at some swanky restaurant with decaf crystals and you are then amazed by the fact that the diner doesn’t slap the waiter, but instead marvels at how great tasting the shitty instant decaf is? (This perhaps had something to do with Folgers comping the meal.)
Well we are attempting something similar here at Chez Butcher this morning, except instead of replacing the fine French press coffee that usually gets our days started with some crappy instant crystal, we’ve substituted caffeinated beef jerky.
We feel the need to preface this by saying we are not making this product up. It’s called Perky Jerky and comes in a foil pouch that seems like it’s begging for you to mix its “invigorating” contents with vodka at some cheesy club. (We will save that experiment for another day, but man it’ll be great, and we will certainly have video: “This glitzy stretch outside the Gansevoort Hotel is home to the Meatpacking District’s swanky Provocateur, host to NYC’s finest Eurotrash and B&T visitors. We’ve secretly replaced the Red Bull in the Vodka Red Bulls with super-charged dried beef strips. Will it be rich enough for our special guests?”)
But, next time. Right now we are just testing the product, billed as the “world’s first all-natural performance enhancing meat snack” as a coffee 
replacement. (Did they have to qualify it as the “first all-natural performance enhancing meat snack” because one loaded with chemicals preceded it?) As far as jerky goes, it’s not at all bad. It’s soft and chewy but not at all tough. There is a nice peppery spice to it, but much too soy saucy for our taste. The guarana might add some zip to the heat on our tongue, or maybe we just got a clump of chili pepper extract.
But then, perhaps we ate it a bit too quickly, though.
There is a certain hotness swelling up in our face and eyes and we feel jittery a few minutes after polishing off the 2 oz. bag. Maybe some instructions on the proper dosage are in order? Or at least a paranoid housewife musing to herself: “That’s funny, Jim never has a second strip of jerky at home.”
Mile End of the road
We are coming for you. Please don’t run out of meat. And please, Brooklyn, save us some poutine.
UPDATE: In fact, we did not make it in time and the house-made pastrami was gone by 3 p.m. Next time you will be ours, delicious smoked meat, next time.
Butcher bra? Why stop there?
The question we get asked the most — well, not the most, but enough that we should remark upon it — is, “Where can I get a butcher bra?”
Now we don’t judge. You can wear whatever strikes your fancy under your clothes. Perhaps you are a masochistic version of Ed Wood, who, played by Johnny Depp, loudly proclaimed, “I like to wear women’s clothes! Panties! Brassieres! Sweaters! Pumps!” and you are just itching (no pun intended) to get yourself a chain mail bra. And like the industrious Mr. Wood, why stop there?
Yes, chain mail panties are within your reach, big guy. And practical, too. In the Atlantic story where he introduced the tantalizing specter of the butcher bra, Tom Mylan also warned of the danger of genital mutilation being a job hazard.
They are a couple of ways you can go about this. You might want to make your own garb, for, you know, the sakes of privacy and propriety. There are some pretty thorough tutorials on how to make and assemble pieces of chain mail, but exactly how to turn them into lingerie is up to you. But be creative. Since the untimely passing of Alexander McQueen the fashion world is hungry for fresh talent.
However, you need not do it yourself. As we mentioned previously, German supplier of butcher equipment Stahlnetz makes about every article of clothing out of “chainmesh” you can imagine, and what they don’t have (aforementioned panties and brassieres) they are only too happy to custom make. (Just as the Stahlnetz man seems only too happy to demonstrate how his glove will work.)
Take it from the Stahlnetz man, and be “safe and comfortable from head-to-toe.”
There’s more to ‘eating meaty’ than having sharp teeth.
There are many reasons to love Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market, beside the fact that they have one of the most simply awesome slogans you are likely to come across — Eat Meaty.
In this video made by Liza at Food Curated, proprietor Jake Dickson outlines a few other good reasons to shop at his store. No. 1 probably being that he visits all the farms that he works with to ensure that they live up to his standards (which he outlines), and No. 2 probably being that he describes the taste difference between grass-fed and grain-fed beef like he is a sommelier talking about the difference between two Riesling grapes.
Tune in next week when Dickson’s chef Gabe Ross makes terrine. (No, seriously.)
Tom Mylan shares ways to ‘horribly wound yourself’
We’ve always known that the Atlantic Monthly was a fine publication, cutting a large swath through politics, art, social issues, and even fiction. But it began to lose us when it took a turn for the pulpy and had its pop-culture makeover (turning point — the Leave Britney Alone cover). But this grande dame of print has fully recovered — at least in our eyes.
Well sort of, since the article that has captured our fancy exists only in online form, so we may not spread it out on the counter and drip our blood on it after we accidentally cut ourselves while attempting simultaneously to read its instruction and slice meat (the piece, incidentally, spends far more time on the former than it does on the latter).
We are speaking, of course, of “How to Wield a Knife” by Mr. Tom Mylan, published by the Atlantic online. Mylan’s method, which he pretty much sums up as “ways to horribly wound yourself,” is, like the renaissance in butchery he helped ignite, a basic-is-best approach.
Mylan is a deft writer, and the short piece, one part instruction, one part memoir, and two parts warning, is a must-read for anyone who has ever spent too much on a knife forged in Japan by the descendant of some ancient swordmaker out of a Tarrantino film, or who just wants learn new ways to slice off pieces of his or her thumb.
“I am an expert,” writes Mylan. He is not, however, referring to butchery. This declaration follows the subhead “Cutting yourself.” In this section we learn one of the secrets to Mylan’s success: his butcher bra — a chainmail chest piece he wears while working that keeps major arteries safe from sharp blades. (You can get yours through Stahlnetz, a German manufacturer of all sorts of bizarre butcher equipment.) While this piece of equipment might be excessive for the average home cook, most of Mylan’s advice — self-effacing, informative yet not instructive — can be applied to your kitchen.
No doubt, the publication of this story will really piss off Julie Powell (who seems to feel she has some sense of ownership over Mylan, as if he were a band she ‘discovered’ in high school that now all these assholes are listening to). But we are all for things that piss off Julie Powell, so please read it.
