Most New Yorkers are surely familiar with Simon Oren’s Tour de France group of restaurants, including Nice Matin, Marseille, Le Monde and L’Express. You may not always notice them, but you know they’re there, a part of the fabric of the city like green and white subway lamps, hot dog vendors, or that guy who walks around squawking like a bird. You’ve likely had brunch with an eccentric old aunt at Cafe D’Asace uptown, stopped into Pigalle when you found yourself trapped in midtown for a meeting or some such nonsense, and, of course, you’ve noshed on some late-late-night cheese and charcuterie over a glass or two of wine at one of the 24-hour French Roasts.

Every October the group celebrates two of our favorite things, beer and sausage, with a pairing festival at all nine of its restaurants. This year marks the 14th such festival. For the first time, though, the boîtes will be pouring so-called “large format” (you know, the big bottles topped with corks) — and, in some cases, vintage — beers by the glass, all selected by Gianni Cavicchi, the group’s Beer Sommelier. Cavicchi says he hopes to show off the complexity of the bottle-fermented beers.

So, for instance, a Chimay Grand Reserve 2010 pairs with the roasted pork shank confit sausage at Pigalle, and the Stillwater Saison pairs with the grilled Moroccan merguez at Maison; while at Marseille Chef Andy D’Amico’s sausage tart with crispy sweetbreads pairs with Trois Monts Golden Ale and at Le Monde Chef Regis’s house-made boudin blanc, prepared in the traditional Loire Valley style, pairs with Loriette Biere de Blanche. Like many of the chefs, Chef Regis will be making some of his sausages in-house.

The sausage plates vary in price, but all beers by the glass will be $6 (qu’elle bargain!). The Sausage and Beer Festival runs from October 20–30. Check out the menus here to plan your tour.

The Shea faithful have more reason to be giddy than they have had in a long, long time. So long in fact, that Shea faithful is the most appropriate moniker for the bleacher-dwelling denizens of Bailout Field. And Thursday night in Flushing, owing to a two-hour rain delay and an impending-sweep euphoria that even thunder claps and pouring rain could not dampen, fans proceeded to eat the complex out of house and home.

The Shake Shack-theme park behind center field filled with soggy fans, who stuck it out for the eventual 9:05 p.m. watching highlight reels from the 1969 and ’73 seasons on the Diamond Vision (including one very surreal image of Tom Seaver shaking hands with Richard Nixon).

And up in steerage, the so-called “Promenade” deck where tickets can be had for the pittance of $25 bucks, the stadium throws the masses a bone, sort of literally in the form of a second Blue Smoke behind home plate (with another in the aforementioned theme park behind Center Field). This is also where Brooklyn Pilsner, easily the best beer to be had in the stadium, is available on tap. The specialty of the casa, though, is pulled pork. And by 7th inning the only smoked meat left in the park was the Phillies players. Blue Smoke reported that it was all out of pork, and Big Pelf dominated to such an extent that we predict that he will become the first Met to toss a no-hitter.

The sweep of the Phillies in which the Mets staff did not allow a run was the first such sweep by the Amazins in more than 40 years (the ’69 world champs were the last to do it). Who can blame the Mets fans for celebrating their run? In the last week their team has made the Yankees and Phillies look as hapless as those rivals have a tendency to make the Mets look. So they left their stadium delirious, singing, chanting, jeering Philly fans, and quite full of pork.

Welcome to the first in our new series: Butcher Bios — a few questions for our favorite meat jockeys (unless they object to being called that, then we’ll stick to butcher). Our goal is to cast about far and wide and collect a staggering database of butchery knowledge. Failing that, we’d like to have a little fun and find out what beer you all drink with your burgers.

To lead off the series,  we have none other than Mr. Tom Mylan of the Meat Hook in Brooklyn, which, in addition to being one of the only places in the city where you can find chorizo-stuffed duck hearts, is also a swell place to take classes. Some of them — all classes are in partnership with the Brooklyn Kitchen — aren’t even about meat, though the best ones (sample: “Gin and charcuterie pairing“), of course, are.

Based: The Meat Hook, Brooklyn, NY

Ethos: Local, Sustainable, Whole Animal, Hard Working, Hard Drinking, Awesome, Fun

Favorite cut: Bone-in Beef Pin Bone Sirloin

Most under-rated cut: Pork Shanks

Favorite preparation: Beef Sashimi

Something he really thought would be good but wasn’t: Anal

Favorite side dish: Caesar Salad, preferably tableside.

Best offal: Heart, any kind. It’s the gateway drug to offal: Looks wierd, tastes amazing!

Worst offal: Beef Liver, dogs love it. I don’t.

Favorite meat/beverage pairing: Cannibal Sandwich (steak tartare on a burger set-up) and a Pepsi Throwback

Favorite Bands: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Moth Super Rainbow

Favorite Book: Fargo Rock City

Favorite Meat Book: The Beef by Moriyasu Tsuneyoshi

Favorite Cookbook: The River Cottage Cookbook

Favorite Movie: Jaws

Favorite TV show: CSI Miami

Favorite whiskey: Wild Turkey Rye

Favorite beer in a can: Busch

A knife should be sharp. Beyond that it should be cheap, good quality and have a comfortable wooden handle. Plastic [handled] knives make me crazy: they’re ugly and dangerous.

The best part of a pig is the skin. You can make so many great things out of it: Ragu, Cotechino, Scrapple, Members Only jackets, Footballs…

A hamburger should be made from mature (25-29 month old) hanging weight (never cryo-ed box beef) 70-30, ground twice through a medium plate and grilled rare. Grinding a little lamb in there is never a bad idea either.

A butcher should be friendly, happy, helpful and excited to sell you something great. That whole surly, condescending butcher thing makes people scared of cooking, afraid of buying meat and leads them right back to getting the crap at the supermarket. If you’re not excited to get out of bed every morning to work hard and love people you should hang up your knives and go work at the Post Office.

A good customer should keep an open mind, not be a recipe slave and listen to their butcher: it’s in his (or her) best interest to make your dinner the best it can possibly be.

A steak should be expensive. Cheap steaks taste weak. Steak should be a special treat, a cellebration, a good time. Get a good one, cook it right and share it with the people who make your life worth living.

You can never have too many meat hooks. Wanna hang a country ham? Meat hook. Wanna hang a plate? Meat hook. Beef Leg? Meat hook. Get that 6-pack of Busch out of the way? Meat hook. It’s not like we named our shop the Meat Hook by accident.

Everyone should read Little House in the Big Woods. The hog butchering section is amazing, it’s like a nose-to-tail how-to book from the days before refrigeration!

A farm I like working with is Kinderhook Farm because Lee cares, he’s the best and he listens.

The best advice I ever received was “There is a reason why they call it a bone saw” -Aaron Lenz

The best advice I ever gave was “Stop cutting towards yourself!”

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.