The butchers are back

Strings of sausages hang from a pole, a dozen kinds. Beef loins are aging the leisurely old-fashioned way -- you can see them through windows. Behind the red marble countertop, a butcher is deftly cutting up chickens: One smooth slice and voila, the leg is free, another and it’s neatly split into thigh and drumstick.

If you said this scene was taking place in an old-time butcher shop, you’d be wrong: We’re at the meat counter at a new Whole Foods supermarket in Thousand Oaks. The old-fashioned, full-service butcher may have become a dying breed, but there are signs of a revival.

Meat counters in neighborhood independent supermarkets are adding top-quality choices such as Kurobuta (Berkshire) pork, hormone-free Angus beef and super-luxury domestic Kobe-style beef and stocking or special-ordering exotic specialty meats and poultry. Oakland-based Preferred Meats Inc., which supplies top-quality organic beef, prime Hereford beef, Kurobuta pork, game and other products to high-end Bay Area restaurants, is looking at opening a branch of its meat business in Los Angeles. (In the meantime, you can check it out, or even order, at www.preferredmeats.com.) The Whole Foods Markets chain is training butchers for its aggressive premium meat program, and it has put dry-aging chambers in most of its 18 local branches.

And though it’s been decades since the old-fashioned butcher shop was a fixture in many neighborhoods, there are actually more full-service, high-quality butcher shops and meat counters than you might think: At least 15 independent full-service meat cutters in the area sell prime beef.

In the protein-loving, post-Atkins world, there’s apparently a market hungry for premium meat, as shown by Preferred Meats’ plan to expand down here. “L.A. is a larger market,” says owner Bala Kironde. “And it has a wider ethnic background that can benefit from our products.” Preferred handles a lot of less common cuts, such as beef cheeks and flap meat, and Kironde figures customers here will be more familiar with them.

But just because consumers are meat lovers doesn’t necessarily mean they’re completely unconcerned with health issues. To that end, Whole Foods’ 18 local stores have brought high-quality “all-natural” meats, raised without hormones or antibiotics, within the geographical reach of most Angelenos.

More and more independents cater to the taste for organic food with hormone- and antibiotic-free beef. Vicente Foods in Los Angeles has added two new lines of beef in the last two years, American Kobe-style beef and hormone-free Angus. El Toro Gourmet Meats in Lake Forest carries Vintage Natural Beef raised in the San Joaquin Valley. A fan of Eastern corn-fed beef might raise an eyebrow at the mention of “natural,” not to mention “San Joaquin Valley,” but it’s surprisingly good beef -- more flavorful than some of the more renowned varieties, though not as tender.

In the last 30 years, the old-time butcher who aged quarters of beef in his locker and cut them to a customer’s order has all but disappeared. The Chicago slaughterhouses now ship meat largely pre-butchered to “wet age” in a shrink wrap that lets the meat age and grow tender, but not attain the rich flavor of dry-aged beef. Under this system, markets don’t need highly trained butchers, just employees who can slice up the shrink-wrapped cuts.

This keeps retail prices lower, but you get what you pay for, or rather, you don’t get what you don’t pay for. Butchers are generally far less skilled these days and often less obliging. It would never occur to most of us to ask the supermarket meat cutter to debone a chicken or French-trim a rack of lamb, even at places that sell high-quality meat.

Unlike most supermarket chains, Whole Foods’ meat counters are full service. “We’re trying to catch some of that old-world butcher shop feel,” says Mike Asaga, regional meat coordinator for Whole Foods. “It’s time to revive some of the old cuts, like flanken ribs and rump roast.”

Riding the rail

But it’s the old-fashioned butcher shops that really pride themselves on their devotion to customer service. Beef Palace Butcher Shop in Huntington Beach prides itself on being one of the last places to have the rail -- the overhead track on which butchers can slide quarters of beef from the aging locker to the cutting room.

Manager Ian Day patiently explains to customers that the dark color of his rib roasts is a desirable sign of dry aging, not -- as it might be in a supermarket butcher case -- an indication that the meat has been in the meat case too long. When you order a steak here, the butchers will ask whether you want them to sprinkle it with the shop’s own seasoning salt. There’s also a basket of potatoes next to the counter; grab one if you feel like a meat-and-potato meal.

Harvey’s Guss Meat Co. is not, properly speaking, a butcher shop but a meat company that supplies some of Los Angeles’ most famous restaurants and caterers (this explains its peculiar hours -- 4 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.). Its price list mentions some 180 cuts of beef, lamb and pork (including netted clods and denuded flap meat, if that’s what you’re after). Since it’s not a shop, you have to call your order in 24 hours ahead, just the way restaurants do, and enter the industrial-looking premises through an unpromising back alley. But owner Harvey Gussman is likely to ask you how you plan to cook the meat and make knowledgeable suggestions.

Bel Air Prime Meats is the mainstay of upscale Beverly Glen. “They have to come here,” joshes owner Joe Rosa, “or their parties will self-destruct.” He has a staff of 31, which partly explains the large displays of convenience meats such as marinated kebabs and chicken breasts. “I will get you any kind of fowl on three days’ notice fresh,” he boasts, “or one day from my freezer.”

Of course it’s not just the level of service or the variety of meats that distinguishes the best meat counters; most important is the quality of the meat.

One mark of a top butcher shop is that it carries prime beef as well as the usual supermarket grade, choice. Prime, the USDA’s highest ranking, means that the meat shows abundant marbling (flecks of fat within the lean). A very few chains, notably Bristol Farms and Gelson’s, carry prime beef, but small, independent meat counters such as Alexander’s Prime Meats in San Gabriel and Owen’s Market in Los Angeles are where you’re most likely to find a good selection of prime.

Prime beef will never be an everyday meat. It’s bound to be expensive because of the extra grain feeding needed to produce the luxurious marbling of fat. It’s the fat that makes prime meat more tender and juicy -- and, even more important, more flavorful. Fat “carries” flavor, as food scientists say; it lets you taste the beef better.

Because of the price, most premium butchers that offer prime also sell the more familiar, less expensive choice grade beef.

Probably the only butcher in town to sell prime beef exclusively is Huntington Meats & Sausage in the Los Angeles Farmers Market at Fairfax Avenue and 3rd Street. “It simplifies things,” says owner Dan Vance. “A customer doesn’t buy a prime steak one day and choice the next and then think I’m a jerk because they don’t taste the same.”

Like high-end purveyors such as Preferred Meats and Whole Foods, top-line butcher shops identify the sources of their meats. Most of the old-fashioned shops, such as Bel Air Prime Meats in Beverly Glen and Beef Palace Butcher Shop in Huntington Beach, stock grain-fed Midwestern beef, mostly from Iowa or Nebraska, though some are loyal to California-raised beef from Harris Ranch.

When a market advertises the breed of cattle its beef comes from, it’s a claim of extra quality. Black Angus beef is renowned for the quality of its meat. There’s a distinction between Certified Black Angus, which is a very high grade of choice beef, and prime Black Angus, which is, of course, prime grade.

Quality from Italy

Some of the beef at Marconda’s Meat in the Farmers Market comes from Piedmontese cattle, an Italian breed with a distinctive muscle structure. It’s more flavorful than you’d expect of meat with so little fat, but it shouldn’t be cooked beyond medium rare or it will seem dry.

Wagyu beef has become a hot seller. The Japanese Wagyu breed is at the opposite end of the fat spectrum from Piedmontese cattle; it’s proverbial for its heavy marbling of fat. Often Wagyu beef is loosely called Kobe, after the Japanese town where it is traditionally raised, but nearly all the Wagyu beef in our markets is domestic. Sometimes a distinction is made between “Kobe-style” (from Wagyu cattle) and “American Kobe” (from a cross between Wagyu and Angus).

Wagyu is the most expensive beef around, but not everybody agrees that it’s the best. “I have it,” says Joe Rosa of Bel Air Meats, “but when people ask for it I try to dissuade them; I put them on the Black Angus.”

Premium butchers usually carry veal and lamb (usually American-raised, rather than Australian or New Zealand lamb) and many are stocking the newly fashionable Kurobuta pork (despite the Japanese name, it’s an old English breed, Berkshire), which is more tender and marbled than ordinary pork. Many have game on hand and all will special-order it for you.

One of the boasts of premium butchers is dry aging. Anybody who has ever had the disappointing experience of tasting freshly slaughtered beef knows that it takes time for beef to develop its familiar flavor (and the tenderness we’re used to). Supermarket beef is wet-aged in shrink wrap, but connoisseurs prefer the flavor of meat aged the traditional way, exposed to the air in a meat locker. Dry aging imposes an investment in time and floor space on the butcher. But mostly it means a loss of weight in the meat, due to dehydration and the need to trim the exposed areas, so it’s more expensive than wet-aged meat. But the result is a concentrated and more developed meat flavor.

Whole Foods Markets has made dry aging one of its hallmarks. It has put aging chambers in all 11 of its newer markets in our area; its seven smaller markets (former Mrs. Gooch’s markets), which don’t have room to dry-age, carry some meat dry-aged for them off-premises.

Butchers learn their trade by apprenticeship. California requires 4,000 hours of supervised work in a butcher shop over a two-year period, plus 144 hours a year of classroom instruction. Unfortunately, meat cutting is not exactly a growth trade. It is estimated that in 2008, California will have 9.8% fewer butchers than it had in 1998.

“I’m a young guy, but I feel like I’m the last of the Mohicans,” says Juan Roca, a meat cutter at Alexander’s Prime Meats, on the premises of Howie’s Ranch Market in San Gabriel.

It’s a feeling echoed by old-fashioned butchers throughout the region. “Meat cutting is a dying trade,” says Whole Foods’ Asaga, referring to his company’s butcher-training program. “There aren’t a lot of chains offering an apprentice program anymore.”

So the scene at Taylor’s Ol’ Fashion Meat Market in Sierra Madre does a meat-lover’s heart good. The case is full of steaks and thick chops, rolled pork roasts and bottom round roasts, marinated tri-tips (five choices of marinade) and the market’s own sausages. And it’s got hamburger too -- Taylor’s supplies hamburger patties to the local Little League teams.

Such places are a world apart from supermarket shrink-wrap land. Meat is a calling. Or as Alexander’s Prime Meats’ Roca says, “I love breaking a side of beef. To me, turning it into a row of perfect steaks and roasts is a thrill like restoring a classic car.”

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A skilled hand at your service

A good butcher can customize your meat for you. For instance:

* Cut chops or steaks extra thick or extra thin.

* Saw ribs crosswise into flanken-style ribs.

* Tie pork or lamb ribs into a crown roast.

* Debone a leg or shoulder, and tie it into a compact roast.

* Skin a chicken.

* Debone a chicken -- remove its rib cage, leaving the bird whole -- so it can hold more stuffing.

* Bard a roast with a thin sheet of fat so that it bastes itself as it cooks.

* “French-trim” the bony ends of lamb chops.

* In some cases, age meat to order.

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Prime spots for old-fashioned cutting

Alexander’s Prime Meats, Howie’s Ranch Market, 6580 N. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel, (626) 286-8871. Nearly all prime-grade beef from Harris Ranch. Dry-ages sides of beef.

Beef Palace Butcher Shop, 5895 Warner Ave., Huntington Beach, (714) 846-0044. Midwestern Angus beef, choice and prime. Dry-ages beef hindquarters and whole lambs.

Bel Air Prime Meats, Beverly Glen Market Place, 2964 Beverly Glen Circle, L.A. (310) 475-5915. Premium veal chops, certified Black Angus beef dry-aged on the premises, game. Smokes meat on the premises.

El Toro Gourmet Meats, 23522 El Toro Road, Lake Forest (949) 855-0215. Hormone- and antibiotic-free beef from the San Joaquin Valley.

The Farms, 2030 Montana Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 828-4244. Midwestern certified Angus beef, choice and prime.

Harvey’s Guss Meat Co., 949 S. Ogden Drive, Los Angeles, (323) 937-4622. Midwestern beef, choice and prime; Napa and Colorado lamb; Kurobuta pork; game. Ages on premises.

Huntington Meats & Sausage, Los Angeles Farmers Market, 6333 W. 3rd St., (323) 938-5383. Harris Ranch beef, prime grade exclusively. Wide variety of sausages.

Jim’s Fallbrook Market, 5947 Fallbrook Ave., Woodland Hills, (818) 347-5525. California beef, game; makes corned beef.

Marconda’s Meat, Los Angeles Farmers Market, 6333 W. 3rd St., (323) 938-5131. Prime Angus beef; also Montana-grown Piedmontese beef, from a breed of cattle naturally low in fat. Ages lamb three weeks.

Owen’s Market, 9769 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 553-8183. Harris Ranch beef, mostly prime grade, aged 2 1/2 weeks on the premises. Special-orders game.

Pacific Ranch Market, 7540 E. Chapman Ave., Orange, (714) 639-9792. Iowa beef, choice and prime grades.

Taylor’s Ol’ Fashion Meats, Howie’s Ranch Market, 14 E. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, (626) 355-3344. Prime and choice Midwestern beef.

Vicente Foods, 12027 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 472-5215. Four kinds of beef: Midwestern prime, certified Black Angus, hormone-free Angus and Kobe.

Whole Foods Markets. To find a store, check the phonebook or go to www.wholefoodsmarket.com. Midwestern Angus beef raised to the market’s orders; some meat is dry-aged (most have aging facilities on site). Also pork, lamb, venison.