Empire State of Mind

  Three months in the big city have come and gone and I find myself once again back in the Lone Star.

Damn, it feels good to be back!

My last week in New York was a whirlwind. I had final exams at Fleishers, one of which required me to break an entire steer in a single day. In case you were wondering, I broke that bad boy down with hours to spare thus finalizing and passing the 12-week Fleishers’ apprenticeship with flying colors.

My last Friday there, the Fleishers staff presented me with my course completion certificate and an amazing knife roll from Victorinox. The knife roll is ridiculous. It holds all nine of my knives, plus my honing steel.

It was bittersweet leaving New York.  Already, I am missing my Fleishers family and our intimate family-style lunches. I will miss Chef Jason in the kitchen and all of his patience with my endless culinary questions. I will miss butchers Jason, Josh and Anderson in the cutting room and all of their wisdom and knowledge imparted to me over the last few months. And of course I will miss my fellow apprentice, Timmy, who always kept things interesting. “Guy” and I had some good times and I will treasure our beer-infused conversations about Chicago's  supremacy in everything from pizza to subways.

To the Fleishers Family,

Gracias and vaya con dios.

Meat Monger

meat monger mēt mon·ger (noun)

1. A dealer in or trader of meats.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I was blessed to have my mother and brother fly up to visit me for the holidays. We did a little bit of everything. I tagged along on some of Mom’s business meetings, we toured Central Park in a rickshaw, saw School of Rock on Broadway, and ate some amazing food. If you are visiting New York City anytime soon, be sure to check out my Eats page where I list some awesome places to “break bread.”

I am now down to my last two weeks in the Fleishers Butcher Apprenticeship. For the past week, I have been stationed in one of their retail shops in Park Slope, a section of Brooklyn. It is a charming, old-school, neighborhood butcher shop. There, I am shadowing the head butcher, Josh Meehan, and assisting with setting and maintaining the meat cases. The shop is a much more fast-tempo environment with customers rushing to procure their meats for the holidays. I’ve had to set aside my cut glove, which I had grown accustomed to. Now, sans glove, I really need to be on my game everyday and careful not to chop a digit or two!

Josh is teaching me how to take the sub primal cuts coming from the Red Hook production facility and transform them into a more refined case cut. This entails cleaning the meat of any fats, silver skin, and other inedible while forming the meat with our blades into our own kind of carnivorous art.

I head back to Texas the end of next week. I’m excited to see the family and be home for the holidays, but I’m going to miss Fleishers. It’s been a great experience.