Back in the day, neighborhoods had their own butcher, their own baker and, well, maybe not their own candlestick maker, but at least other purveyors who were masters of their trades. You get the point.
Today, butcher shops are making a comeback in New Orleans. But while the old butcher shop techniques are often the same, the way this next generation courts customers has changed. They’re finding new ways to introduce the prospect of a full butcher’s case to a clientele that may have been raised on supermarket staples and processed products.
Two examples in New Orleans now show different styles. We’ll start at Shank Charcuterie, a new butcher shop along St. Claude Avenue, in the Marigny. It doubles as a lunch counter, and a visit here can also feel like a lunchtime tutorial in the butcher’s craft as you watch the sausage get made alongside your sandwich.
Never mind old school, Shank Charcuterie feels Old World, like a corner stall in a public market, with its sole proprietor multitasking at the helm. He breaks down the sides of beef and whole hogs that fill the Shank Charcuterie meat case. Behind the counter, he cooks a short menu of meaty dishes and snacks that change according to what’s in that case. You’ll find eggs with hanger steak, peppery-plump boudin links, meatballs or ropa vieja.
The focus at Shank Charcuterie is butcher shop-first, and that makes it a little unorthodox as an eatery. The burger I tried wasn’t even a patty until I ordered one up. The butcher shaped and seasoned it as I watched, griddled it up and, while I ate he went back to cutting chops. The upshot: one of the best burgers I’ve had in ages, and a completely open view to what went into making it -- the ingredients and the effort.
Across town, another example of the multi-tasking modern butcher shop is Cleaver & Company. This shop has been around for a few years but now it has a new owner, and a new approach. So now, Cleaver & Company is a butcher shop with its own chef, its own in-house pop-up dining events and even its own food truck.
Working directly from the retail butcher case, the crew here makes a short menu of sandwiches that start with smoked brisket or pork belly with chimichurri. On the weekend there’s boudin links and boudin balls and bags of hot cracklin’.
For its periodic pop-ups, you see groups of friends turning the big butcher blocks into ad hoc communal tables, eating skirt steak or chicken fried sweetbreads or whatever the chef puts together. And with the food truck, Cleaver & Company is taking this show on the road, serving a menu that changes but of course always comes back to the butcher’s first calling – the meat.
In one sense, both of these spots – Shank Charcuterie and Cleaver & Company – join the tide of new eateries around New Orleans. But they’re also dialing it back to some very old ways. Their flavors are different, but each modern butcher shop is working in the same vein.
2352 St. Claude Ave., 504-218-5281
3917 Baronne St., 504-227-3830
