Butcher shops are once again growing in popularity. Thanks to Michael Pollan, Fast Food Nation, and Jamie Oliver, we now have a much better sense of how that shrink wrapped piece of meat ends up in the fluorescent fridge of our grocery store. We also understand that it doesn’t taste nearly as good as it should.
Before grocery stores became supermarkets and super Wal-Marts, most people shopped at butcher shops where their meat was custom-cut by skilled butchers. I appreciate the role of a butcher not just because I’m a foodie, but because I come from a long line of butchers.
My Grandfather Oteri owned a butcher shop in the Bronx where my father worked and my mother’s family always shopped. Eventually, my Dad first asked my Mom out on a date while she was stopping by the butcher shop.
All of my Grandfather’s brothers were butchers as were the brothers of my paternal Grandmother. Her father was a butcher in East Harlem, which, up until the 1960s, was the biggest Italian neighborhood in New York. All of these shops have changed hands and are no longer butcher shops. The shop where my parents met is now a Tower Isles Jamaican Beef Patty store. My Uncle Pat’s specialty poultry store is now empty, and the shop in East Harlem has probably turned over a dozen times.
There is one, however, that still remains, and what is most remarkable is that it is the very first store owned by family in the United States: Vincent’s Meat Market on Arthur Avenue is still a busy and bustling, custom-cut butcher shop with a huge array of Italian specialties. In my opinion, it is one of the best food shops in all of New York City.
Tags: Arthur Avenue, Baccalà, butcher, Marty, sausage, vincent's meat market
