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!”

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

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.”

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.

If you missed Tom Mylan’s pig roast at 3rd Ward in Bushwick luckily there is a condensed video version. A crew from WNYC were apparently among the countless throngs recording the event. You don’t get to taste any pork tacos this way, but you do get hear Tom say that, “If you’re the kind of person who can’t afford to go to the Hamptons for weekend, this is the Hamptons in the city.”

Tom Mylan groupies had their day in the sun this Sunday at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. The pig finished roasting in a impromptu smoker of cinder blocks during the Colt 45 open bar for the first hour, though it must be said the baby bottles of malt liquor were hardly worth the wait on line. The six-oz sippers should have come with their own plastic straws, so clearly were they meant for children.

The roast wasn’t in the sprawling 3rd Ward space, but outside in a long narrow alley adjacent, with a band set up at one end and the real rock star of the moment, Mylan, at the other end (though on further consideration, he may be more Mike Watt than Morrissey). People crowded around a window in a hallway overlooking the carving space to get a look at Mylan performing, assisted by chef Eric Sherman and a Mexican (which we say only because he wore a T-shirt that read “Mexican!”). Sherman seemed most uncomfortable chopping and dicing the hot porcine slabs, while Mylan sliced and carved, seemingly oblivious to all else, and the Mexican made fast work of pounds of pork at a time.

The process was surely one of the most well-documented pig roasts in the history of pig roasts. 3rd Ward is, after all, an artists collective and work space, and the members seem to have a new father’s urge to record every second of activity in every possible way. A reporter with a notebook seemed to be taking down Mylan’s life story while he waited to remove the pig from the smoker. A camerawoman with headphones slid in out of corners around the work station.

One eager fan placed her head uncomfortably close to the pig’s face just inches away from where Mylan’s blade flashed. He grinned at the fan’s friend who was preserving the moment for posterity (and in that split-second you could be forgiven for worrying that a human ear would soon join all the piles of pork flesh).

All manner of photogs with snazzy long-lenses snapped away from every angle. One woman got out an old wooden accordion camera and set up her tri-pod across from the pig, splayed out on its wire mesh with Mylan lording over it and took what was sure to be an appropriately old-timey portrait.

All of this activity isn’t even beginning to count all the iPhones and camera phones flashing through the windows and in the alley. One imagines Mylan as an old man, long forgotten and walking down the steps of his dilapidated brownstone after holstering his assortment of knives: “Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up.”

After what seemed like more than an hour’s labor the tacos were for sale to all. They came simply — small piles of pork cubes plopped on tortillas with little more embellishment than a few shreds of lettuce. The line for a taste stretched up and down the long alley and snaked into the building, a seemingly hopeless case, except for the helpful addition of trays to service the back of the line with one taco per person, a while-you-wait taco, if you will.

And into this screaming chaos walked another star of the fatty food culture: Zak Pelaccio, whose Fatty Crab team took the top prize at Cochon 555 in New York a few months ago. Pelaccio strolled in, resplendent in white slacks and a Hawaiian shirt, took one look at the line and pork tacos bedecked with wilting lettuce.

“This is just going to make me mad,” he sniffed, and turned and walked out the door.

Then the rains came and washed all the pork grease away, dousing the squealing crowd, the chefs, Mylan, the band’s instruments and all of the waiting open and barren tortillas. Everyone rushed to cover the pig and food and the buckets of prepared pork, but the rains came hard and everything except spirits was considerably dampened.

That’s right. The New York Times, our newspaper of choice for cradling fish and chips or mopping up the seepage from a hanger steak (let’s see you do that with a Kindle), has declared that butchers are the hotness of the culinary universe.

Sure chefs are the rock stars, the paper reasons, but they are in the arena windmilling and grinding out cock rock, while the butcher, well, the butcher is in a back room bathed in blood, sulking and flexing his muscles. To hear the Times tell it, butchers are a cross between Danzig and Bright Eyes, while chefs (especially Daniel Boulud) are Def Lepard (and of course Mario Batali is Meat Loaf, but that’s too easy).

They even have this quote from a butcher groupie:

“Think about it. What’s sexy?” said Tia Keenan, the fromager at Casellula Cheese and Wine Café and an unabashed butcher fan. “Dangerous is sometimes sexy, and they are generally big guys with knives who are covered in blood.”

The article (yet again, as if New York magazine wasn’t doing a good enough job of this already) lovingly caresses Marlow & Daughters butcher Tom Mylan, who the paper calls “broody” (maybe he’s Morrisey). But then the writer unearths Ryan Farr, of San Francisco, a, um, rather colorful butcher who calls himself a “producer of porcine pleasure”and gives cutting demonstrations, complete with cocktails. For $30, Farr followers can drink at a local bar while he butchers a pig (and soon, a lamb and a quarter of a steer). And then there’s this fantasy he has about Mylan, which we don’t know quite what to make of:

Mr. Farr has a dream. “I want to throw a 300-pound pig in the middle of a room full of people and just tag-team it with him,” he said. So far, Mr. Mylan hasn’t set a date.