Columbus Monthly / August 2012 / Gourmet Grocery Guide: Meat

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Gourmet Grocery Guide: Meat

The best meat, produce and more inside the city’s top grocery stores

Italian Marvel

Carfagna’s
1405 E. Dublin-Granville Rd., North Side

Carfagna’s is the type of grocery store you inherit. Walk up to the meat counter, press the lever on the ancient machine to get a numbered ticket, and look around—you get the sense everyone in line in front of you can remember pressing their noses against the butcher case glass as kids while their parents bought the same gloriously tender steaks and mouthwatering meatballs. Though the old-school Italian grocery has grown to include a Polaris restaurant and a full-scale sauce-making operation, the service remains the same—they’ll even take your bags out to your car for you. Because things don’t change here often. And that’s a good thing.

Don’t miss: The pasta, including fresh, stuffed ravioli and hard-to-find dried shapes. We recently devoured a package of their gnocchi.

Family Affair

Weiland’s Gourmet Market
3600 Indianola Ave., Clintonville

Weiland’s Gourmet Market has always been a prime destination for protein, and even now you’ll find co-founder John Williams manning the butcher counter just as he did when the store opened in 1961. Weiland’s has since expanded, but it’s still a family affair—daughter Jennifer Williams and her husband, Scott Bowman, are now running the day-to-day operations. This is the type of butcher’s department where you can ask for advice on how best to prepare your perfectly marbled steaks or what seasoning would taste great on your luscious Gerber chicken breasts. Don’t miss: Weiland’s also has an on-site baker, which means you can get a nice, crusty rosemary bread to serve as the backdrop for your next-day steak sandwich.

 

Meat Your Maker

Bluescreek Farm Meats, 59 Spruce St., Arena District

When it comes to buying meat, Jamie Smith of Bluescreek Farm has one piece of advice handed down from her father that she always follows: Trust who you’re buying from, and ask a lot of questions. So we did, and in return, she offered some recommendations for lamb and beef cuts that Bluescreek sells at its North Market stall and gave us tips on the care and keeping of proteins:

Beef: chuck-eye steak
This steak is part chuck (what you’d buy for a pot roast) and part rib roast (think fatty and luscious), a perfect blend of tender and flavorful. “You have to cook this medium to well, or it doesn’t taste right,” Smith says.

Beef: charcoal steak
Those who try this English roast become dedicated converts, Smith says. She likes to marinate the tender, distinct-tasting cut in orange juice for a few hours and cook it on medium-low heat.

Lamb: “mountain oysters”
Avert your sensitive eyes: “Mountain oysters” are a nicer way of saying lamb testicles. Smith says that when you slice and fry them, they taste like a cross between steak and liver.

Lamb: lamb neck
An on-the-cheap way to do a roast: Lamb neck is equivalent to a chuck roast, so it’s ideal to cook low and slow until it’s fall-apart tender.

Way Beyond Beef

Giant Eagle Market District, 3061 Kingsdale Center, Upper Arlington

There’s some weird stuff in the butcher’s case at Giant Eagle Market District. We asked the store’s executive development chef, John Gruver, what to do with some of their more, ahem, obscure meats. (Oddly, it all kinda tastes like chicken.)

CAPON
A capon (illustrated at right) is the eunuch of the poultry world—it’s a young rooster that’s been castrated to mellow it out and improve its flavor. You can roast the 8-to-12-pound capon in the oven with some poultry seasoning and fresh herbs. “Usually, rooster meat isn’t very good, but when you castrate them, you get a more tender, quality meat that’s a little richer,” he says.

SNAKE
Market District carries a few different kinds of serpents: rattlesnake and Burmese python. Treat it like fish or chicken and fry it in either cornmeal or breadcrumbs or throw it into a pot of gumbo. “People say it tastes like chicken, but it depends on the method,” Gruver says. “It’s got such a mild flavor that it absorbs whatever you put on it.”

ALLIGATOR
Also in the reptile department, Market District serves up alligator steaks, the ideal meat for any time the Buckeyes are playing the Florida Gators. You can prepare it like snake meat or treat it more like a piece of duck or lamb with a quick flash-frying or a slow braise. “It’s considered the same as snake meat as far as flavors, but it can be a little tougher because these guys don’t have a lot of fat on them,” Gruver says.

Illustrations by Paige Vickers