What's the difference between what you do and what would happen in, say, a grocery store butchery? Walk me through the process…once you get an animal into the shop, what are you looking for?

“I'd say traditionally, back in the day, there would have been two words for what you're describing…one would have been a ‘butcher shop’ or a ‘butchery,’ and then the other would have been a ‘meat market.’ What you're getting in a larger supermarket that has a meat counter, or a cut-in-house program where you're still buying the paper-wrapped stuff, is what I would describe as a meat market.

“So there are two things that we're doing. There's the actual butchery, which is taking a carcass and fabricating it down into smaller pieces, and then there's the cutting and portioning of the steaks. Traditionally, a butchery would have referred to a place that was working with, if not whole carcasses, then at least sections…they might be bringing in quarters or halves, or a thing called subprimals, which is where you have multiple sections still connected to each other. Whereas traditionally a meat market would have been the people just buying in the steaks that they're then slicing up and the ground that they're portioning, or maybe some stuff they're grinding in house.

“So the big difference for us is that we're working with whole animals. We're bringing them in and we're doing our own breakdown.”

I was reading that you have created more than 80 varieties of sausage, but only a certain number are for sale at any given time. How do you decide which flavors you're carrying at any one time, or how do you go about discovering or creating new flavors?

“Well, you're giving me a little too much credit to suggest that there's a process! (laughs). It's kind of just like the whim of whatever we're feeling that day. I spent eight years in restaurants before getting into being a butcher. My head butcher, Justin Ricketts, also spent a number of years in restaurants, and then a number of our staff have either worked in restaurants or are just really into food. So for us, the sausage flavors are a fun time to be creative and put some ideas into play.

“It also is exciting for the customers to see something new every time they're in the store, rather than just the same five or ten flavors. We only have one sausage variety that's available at all times, which is our Nonna's Variety. That is from the gentleman who taught me how to butcher. It's his Italian grandmother's sausage recipe. She was from the area around Avellino and came to the U.S. in the late 1920s, and she was still making a sausage up until the last couple years of her life. And she taught him to make it, and we used to make it in his butcher shop.

“It was called Nana's for him, because he called her his nana. But I took the recipe, and I call it Nonna's because she wasn't my nana. We still make it…we make it true to form. So I hope we do her proud. And it's been wildly popular. It wasn't intended to be a standby flavor…when we opened, I thought that we were going to rotate through a number of different Italian sausage flavors. But it's really become the flavor that people get upset if we run out of, so we keep it around all the time.”

What do you think the biggest mistake is that home cooks make when they're preparing meat? Are there any words of wisdom that you can share?

“I'd say two things. The first is, they worry a little too much! Just cook the meat. You're going to enjoy it. We get people coming in all the time, buying a nice steak or something, and they're like, ‘Well, I just really hope I don't mess it up,’ and they'll ask a million questions. And we’re like, ‘It's going to be good. Don't stress too much.’

But the other thing is not using a thermometer…we always recommend using a thermometer. Everyone's watched TV shows where they see a chef poke at a thing or whatever. The way this was described to me forever ago is that the only way you're going to really understand how to poke and tell how done your steak is if you're cooking 100 of the same steak every night.

“Two different cuts are going to feel different. Medium rare on a tenderloin is not going to feel like medium rare on a hanger steak, and it's not going to feel like medium rare on a ribeye. They're all going to be different. So unless you're cooking hundreds of pounds of meat a week and you're really fine tuned, you're never going to be able to poke it and get it perfect. So invest in a good meat thermometer and check your temps. I do it every time I cook, and it makes a huge difference.

“And another thing would be to let your meat rest. It really makes a huge difference. I know everybody thinks they want to eat it hot out of the pan. But if you let it rest, it's going to really let those muscles relax and it's going to preserve more of the juice.”

Bonus Question: If you hadn't become a butcher, what do you think you would be doing today?

“Well, I don't think I would be doing it, because NOT doing it is part of the reason I ended up being a butcher! But I actually went to undergrad and then grad school and studied geology, and finished a master's in geochemistry and was at some point looking to get a PhD. So I suppose there's an alternative world in which I'd be a university professor right now. I'm glad I'm not.”