A recent New York Times article looks at restaurants that have started butchering their own meat, citing ethical, technical, and economic reasons.  Fleisher’s Meats, a butcher shop with two New York state locations and an excellent reputation, has even adjusted their wholesale business so that customers now need to buy either whole or half animals.  Fleisher’s either carves the carcasses once they’ve been delivered to the wholesale customer, or they train the customer (chefs, mainly) to carve them themselves. Tom Mylan, now head butcher for Marlow & Sons in Williamsburg and their other restaurants, moved in with the Applestone family, which owns Fleisher’s, and stayed for a month while he learned to butcher.  “He came back with muscles,” says Mark Firth, owner of Marlow & Sons and three other Brooklyn restaurants.  Mylan now butchers all of the animals for the four restaurants in the Marlow & Sons family, and allocates the parts, “a Volkswagen’s weight in meat,” during a once-a-week meeting with chef representatives from each of the four restaurants.  The owners of the group will also be opening a butcher shop—Marlow & Daughters—at the end of the year, the first retailer in New York City selling meat that’ll be sourced entirely from small farms, cut to order, every day of the week. 

Fashionable as it may be, this trend is good news from an environmental, gustatory and common-sense perspective, and I hope it sticks. “Nose to tail” eating—making use of all the different parts of the animal—may not please every palate, but chefs ought to be skilled enough to practice it. The more experience and confidence they have, the more likely they’ll be to make even the funny bits toothsome enough to convince the doubters.