Best Butchers in Vancouver (Merged)

[Chef Fowke]

But what about textures...

The mirepoix has done its duty, their are no flavours or nutritional value left in the overcooked, limp, insipid carrots, celery, leek or onions.

Take an average osso bucco and add in some great texture to compliment the flavour and complexity of the dish. Use some pearl onions, roasted garlic and small button mushrooms that have been sautéed until tender with a little lardon, deglazed with a simple sherry and added back into the dish.

And of course, fresh herbs are always added in the final 5% of cooking to retain their natural oils and aromas.

And, as a young man in France, what would the chef have feed his staff if he did not remove the mirepoix from his osso bucco, stocks, and consommés? That’s what us dough heads got for dinner, and where very thankful.

[nwyles]

You forgot to add the he would add 10 liters of water to it, call it soup, give you crusts of yesterday's bread and then you could thank him for his kindness.

And for dinner the next day, carrot peel soup !

Yum, and gritty too.

[Chef Fowke]

You forgot to add the he would add 10 liters of water to it, call it soup, give you crusts of yesterday's bread and then you could thank him for his kindness.

And for dinner the next day, carrot peel soup !

Yum, and gritty too.

Ah, the memories of eating garbage to survive....

[Daddy-A]

You forgot to add the he would add 10 liters of water to it, call it soup, give you crusts of yesterday's bread and then you could thank him for his kindness.

And for dinner the next day, carrot peel soup !

Yum, and gritty too.

Did they turn the fat you trim off the top of stocks into a yummy pate?

[nwyles]

You would put it in the cooler and let it harden and use it as butter for you bread on special days.

Yum , butter !

Edited August 26, 2004 by nwyles (log)

[stovetop]

Remember it is Italian not French, the French just have to puree everything; what I will do is put some more veg at the end so it is not fully disintegrated.

steve

[Chef Fowke]

I put a call in this morning....The Merguez Sausage should be here in a couple of days, it is in the style of Toulouse. Coop, I will PM you when it gets in...

...It's here!

It arrived in a plain white wrapper.

Must talk to Neil, I will bring it by HSG tomorrow so we can taste it.

Oh My God, It's like Christmas!

[Daddy-A]

...It's here!

It arrived in a plain white wrapper.

Must talk to Neil, I will bring it by HSG tomorrow so we can taste it.

Oh My God, It's like Christmas!

You are cruel! First you tempt us with pastrami ... now this!!!

I need a sandwich dammit!

Arne

[Chef Fowke]

As I said, I've not made Osso Buco before, but neither the Batali recipe nor the  Bourdain recipe call for straining the vegetables out. 

Could be they were just making the recipe more user friendly for the masses....

Oh....and I AlWAYS make sure my dinner guests "have a glass of wine in hand "....makes everything taste SO much better!

Great point!!

Restaurant standard for making osso bucco would see the meat simmered for 5 - 7 hours while a home version would have the meat boiled for a few hours.

...after just a few hours of cooking the vegetables would still remain editable, while in the longer method all that is left is a stringy mess.

I forget that most people do not have a kitchen brigade of 50 and a clean-up crew of 10 with 100's of thousands of BTU's burning and all day to prepare misen place.

[stovetop]

Chef Fowke do you lean more to French then Itilian style foods??

steve

[Chef Fowke]

Chef Fowke do you lean more to French then Itilian style foods??

steve

Prairie Canadian!

...okay, French was my training.

[stovetop]

Chef Fowke are we as Canadian Chefs finally getting something we can call Canadian Cuisine, for me I notice varied differences in style depending where you go in Canada, Vancouver definitely has regional styles but are we just becoming an ethnic cuisine style or are the kids backgrounds that come from all over really becoming Canadian, they are born here so that makes them Canadian thus Canadian cuisine??

When we Canadians are trained by Canadian Born chefs working with Canadian products does not that make Canadian Cuisine???

We have so much world influence in Vancouver, but yesterday I was digging back in the postings and it is strange to read all those critical posting by all the Critics, they come to Vancouver and approach the scene with rose colored glasses, like are we New York, Montreal, Seattle, LA; No we are not, we are Vancouver, the public here has very different needs and are not into the what is hot and what is not scene, we in the restaurant business in Vancouver have a very big cost factor so we must survive, to do so we have to meet the needs of the market, not the whims of the trendy, to do so will inedible be your demise because the trendy change.

Something similar is peoples hardness in trying to analyze Hawaiian food, god what the hell is someone trying to use New York as a base to criticize something, remember people NEW York is almost bigger then all of Canada, you can have the most finite of concepts and you will find a market, 1% of 13 million is 130,000 that is almost bigger then Van proper, you can not serve small Markets in Vancouver, you have to accommodate the locals, I am sure in Hawaii it is the same, but they have a huge tourist market so I am sure they have to accommodate them. Hawaii is Hawaii not New York, if you want something to be like New York then stay home and eat their, or open your mind and try something different, then learn and build a base of knowledge then the critics can adjust their parameters then can be critical, otherwise in my opinion you as the critic are not objective?? (Subjective)??

[Chef Fowke]

Chef Fowke are we as Canadian Chefs finally getting something we can call Canadian Cuisine, for me I notice varied differences in style depending where you go in Canada, Vancouver definitely has regional styles but are we just becoming an ethnic cuisine style or are the kids backgrounds that come from all over really becoming Canadian, they are born here so that makes them Canadian thus Canadian cuisine??

When we Canadians are trained by Canadian Born chefs working with Canadian products does not that make Canadian Cuisine???

We have so much world influence in Vancouver, but yesterday I was digging back in the postings and it is strange to read all those critical posting by all the Critics, they come to Vancouver and approach the scene with rose colored glasses, like are we New York, Montreal, Seattle, LA; No we are not, we are Vancouver, the public here has very different needs and are not into the what is hot and what is not scene, we in the restaurant business in Vancouver have a very big cost factor so we must survive, to do so we have to meet the needs of the market, not the whims of the trendy, to do so will inedible be your demise because the trendy change.

Something similar is peoples hardness in trying to analyze Hawaiian food, god what the hell is someone trying to use New York as a base to criticize something, remember people NEW York is almost bigger then all of Canada, you can have the most finite of concepts and you will find a market, 1% of 13 million is 130,000 that is almost bigger then Van proper, you can not serve small Markets in Vancouver, you have to accommodate the locals, I am sure in Hawaii it is the same, but they have a huge tourist market so I am sure they have to accommodate them. Hawaii is Hawaii not New York, if you want something to be like New York then stay home and eat their, or open your mind and try something different, then learn and build a base of knowledge then the critics can adjust their parameters then can be critical, otherwise in my opinion you as the critic are not objective?? (Subjective)??

This is good....

we need to move this and start it as a new thread....any moderators around?

[Daddy-A]

Chef ... how was the merguez?

I was going to drop in on you guys today ... but there was this lunatic yelling at a tow-truck driver ....

Just PM'd Fat Guy about the moderator ... seems we don't have one, so we'll see what he has to say.

Arne

[Chef Fowke]

Chef ... how was the merguez? 

I am walking over right now to see Neil...should be eating in the next 30 minutes!

[Daddy-A]

Chef ... how was the merguez? 

I am walking over right now to see Neil...should be eating in the next 30 minutes!

Bastard!

[nwyles]

It's 5:30 now and I finished mine about half an hour ago.

Delish !

The Canadain Food and Drug people can not confiscate what is already eaten can they. ( please do not answer that as the quality of posts could deteriorate very quickly )

Now, how do we get some prohibited cheeses !

[cubilularis]

I Love Merguez...

But more importantly, we can talk about great Butchers in Vancouver.

The truth is...you need to be friends with a busy restaurant owner in Vancouver if you want to get really fresh fish or good meat...

What is in the market is all number two's. The restaurants buy the good stuff and the rest is sold to the USA at a premium because of the dollar exchange.

[stovetop]

It is hard for restaurants to find the good stuff too, most good stuff is Exported, as a chef you have to do some good food sourcing and deal with a lot of suppliers to find good stuff, it is out there you just have to search.

[yunez]

I love grilling steaks but I find that the meats available in supermarkets are not up to standard. Do you guys know where the good butchers are in vancouver (I live in Richmond)? I love lots of marbling in my steak!

[kurtisk]

My favourite is The British Butcher Shoppe in North Van. My wife did a story on bacon (real bacon) in Vancouver some years back for Angela at The Georgia Straight and found the place to be quite notable and good. On that note, if you drop by you must buy the bacon that he cures himself in a variety of styles.

k.

ps- thinking about it, he may not have steaks. sorry, just got excited. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... bacon.

Edited June 26, 2005 by kurtisk (log)

[mtigges]

ps- thinking about it, he may not have steaks. 

←

He's got steaks. But not normally a wide variety. He usually does have nice rib eyes. And the steaks on display are an appropriate width as well.

If you go to BB, buy some bacon for sure, but don't miss the sausages.

edited to add this comment:

BB is a favourite of mine too, but it's just up the street from me. My favourite in the whole city is Armandos on Granville Island. He's just a great butcher, and a super-nice guy.

Mark.

Edited June 26, 2005 by mtigges (log)

[chef jeff]

There are a couple of Italian butchers in town that rock my sausages. Columbus Meat Market on first and renfrew, and Cioffi's Meat Market on Hastings in Burnaby Hieghts a couple blocks past the Pear Tree.

They both have great steaks, game and nice sausages and bacon. They both also have horse! And thier prices are very competitive.

[dillybravo]

In contrast to some of the old reco's above I must say that I find the Jackson's on Granville to be not the best; maybe good for steaks but I always see plenty of too-old meat in their cooler, particularly sausages. I like their Irish Cured Ham but it's been pretty funky a few times I've bought the vacuum packed ham steaks and even sliced ham, so I try to stay away now.

The most intriguing recommendation that I haven't followed up on yet (no car, no BBQ, no time!), which you may miss mention of, is Traditional Fayre and Meats, said to be near Hastings and MacDonald about two blocks from Cioffi's. Pretty far from Richmond, but I've confirmed with a couple of people that he dry-ages his steaks well past the 28-day mark on occasion and that to me is the best of all possible worlds, even if the marbling isn't perfect (which I suspect it likely is).

It is hard to find well-marbled steaks because the consumer prefers steaks with "less fat" and the "fatty" ones don't get sold. You should definitely ask particularly, wherever you go, if they have anything well-aged and well-marbled in the back, or if they can get something in, because they probably can. Any good butcher will appreciate that you have such good taste and knowledge about your beef and find you something special.

Finally, if you like reading about meat as much as eating it, you should check out Steingarten's adventures in search of well-dry-aged beef (and the pursuant attempts to do it himself when none could be found), in the essay "High Steaks" found in It Must Have Been Something I Ate.

Edit: Hmm, wasn't going to mention Armando's at Granville Island because I'm not sure about the marbling, but I just found this suggestion from VanEats where 30-day aging (but is it dry-aged? I suspect wet-aged, which is not the same) is claimed; also, the people at Oyama, whose prepared meats are the finest in the land, recommend them as well.

Edited June 26, 2005 by dillybravo (log)

[JenBragg]

Hi,

My favorite butchers are at Winsor Meats on Main & King Edward. The ribeye has a great beefy flavour and sufficient marbelling. I also enjoy the old-school meat pies.

Regards, Jen