First Look: Butcher & Larder Now Open

Grid View

• Don't piss off the butcher!
• The meat slicer has already seen a lot of action
• The front counter -- the case is filled with great products
• Behind the scenes
• Looking out the front window
• Where the magic happens
• Yes, this place is old school

The highly anticipated new butcher shop, The Butcher & Larder, finally opened its doors over the weekend. Owner Rob Levitt, who announced 10 days ago the shop passed city inspections, happily welcomed the first eager customers to his new butcher shop on Sunday.

Levitt told us last week they'll regularly stock beef, pork, lamb and chicken. Every so often they'll also get duck, rabbit and likely some other less common animals. They'll butcher the animals right out in front because "it takes the fear out of it," Levitt said. "We do it out in the open so people understand it comes from somewhere. It isn't born in a styrofoam tray."

On the first day, Levitt, along with his wife, Allie, and their staff, sold through a bunch of products. Levitt wrote on the blog that he "cut a beautiful bone-in ribeye, a three-pound pork chop, a hunk of beef navel and even fired up the band saw for some short ribs." The case held sausage, roast beef, chicken liver pâté and pork collar, which he said they happened to sell a bunch of.

The shop is open today until 7 p.m. and will be closed, as it will each week, on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Levitt will start offering sandwiches: sloppy joe's for the hot offering and porchetta with fennel, pickles and arugula as the cold sandwich. Butcher & Larder will have about a dozen seats to eat sandwiches and soups on site. They'll also start serving Metropolis coffee.

As for making the transition from chef, which he was at Mado for the last few years, to butchering shopkeeper, Levitt seems pretty happy he made the switch. "I felt like a butcher. I still feel like a butcher, because I am a butcher," he wrote. "But it feels right and I am happy, a different feeling entirely than I felt as a chef."
· The Butcher & Larder Passes City Inspections, Opening Soon [~EChi~]
· Day One [Butcher's Grip]