The New Butchers

By Arlene Kroeker

Photo by Philip Solman

There is a new kind of rock star on the food scene: young butchers. As Kim Severson wrote in The New York Times (July 2009), “With their swinging scabbards, muscled forearms and constant proximity to flesh, butchers have the raw emotional appeal of an indie band. They turn death into life, in the form of a really good skirt steak.”

Are there young rock star butchers in Vancouver? Yes. Just follow West Vancouver’s Marine Drive into Dundarave Village and look for the black and white sign announcing Sebastian & Co. Fine Organic Meats. Walk between two restaurant patios and enter the sleek, small shop of an organic butcher.

Thirty-four-year-old Sebastian Cortez, a Chilean-born chef-turned-butcher, stands next to a square wooden butcher block, an iPhone, a window into a cooler where dry-aged meat is visible, and a stack of books that includes The River Cottage Meat Book, Professional Charcuterie, and Gourmet Game. In black pants and a black shirt protected by a black-and-white-striped apron, he is prepared to cut whole sides of beef, entire hogs, and lambs, with the assurance and finesse of a surgeon.

Out of concern for sustainability and respect for the animal, he uses every part of the carcass—from the hocks for soup to the jowl for bacon; from steaks to bresaola and corned beef; from ham to prosciutto and bacon with crackling. He cures, salts, and pickles. He injects smoke flavour into hams. He works by hand-twisting sausages and hand-forming burgers. His dry-aged beef hangs for forty-two days until it is purplish black on the surface, tender and flavourful inside. (Customers come from as far as Singapore for his dry-aged porterhouse steaks.)

He buys the best quality he can—Canadian prime beef—and uses organic whenever possible, noting that organic doesn’t always mean the best. Often, he says, there is less fat with organic meat, and he doesn’t want customers who pay top dollar to be disappointed by the lack of flavour.

Raised on Chilean barbecues, Sebastian arrived in Toronto ten years ago and, with limited English, found work doing minor duties in a kitchen. When a chef told him to go to college, he did just that.

After graduating from the culinary program at George Brown College, he worked for renowned Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy, but realized he didn’t want a chef’s lifestyle. “I’d have to love the career more than life,” he says. What to do? An invitation to his best friend’s farm changed everything.

On the farm, Sebastian assisted with butchering, and for the first time he saw the animal in its entirety. As a chef, he had worked with tenderloins, but never gave a thought as to where they came from or which muscles held them together. He came away from the experience with a new direction and went to work at The Healthy Butcher in Toronto before moving to Vancouver and opening Sebastian’s in 2007.

There is a difference, Sebastian says, between a butcher and a meat cutter. The art of butchery receded in the 1960s with the industrialization of meat raising and processing. Today’s modern “butcher” receives his boxed standardized cuts of pork and beef from a centrally located slaughterhouse, which he then slices into smaller cuts.  “I could have gone that route,” he says, “but it wouldn’t have been the same. Then it would have been a job and not a passion.” So he receives a dressed carcass weighing about 900 pounds, of which fifty pounds are twenty-four strip loins, twenty rib eyes, and eight tenderloins. “What about the rest of it?” he says. That’s where he can be creative.

Sebastian returned to Chile to learn the techniques of Chilean butchers. Their exotic cuts differ from North American cuts of meat (for example, vacio, which has no English equivalent) and are delicious if prepared the right way, so part of Sebastian’s job is to educate his customers.

He doesn’t do it all alone.

His wife, Jessica Gibson (she was the draw to Vancouver), handles the business details and, because she travels for her “day job,” she sources products from Europe to line the shop’s custom-built shelves that artfully display gourmet pastas, sauces, Fresh Lime Vinegar, Spicy Tokyo Rub, and Sinful Coconut Sauce. But it’s the counter showcase that displays Sebastian’s masterpieces: steaks, roasts, racks, hand-made sausages, flattened chicken, and duck prosciutto. Chorizo sausage, pancetta, duck confit, duck and pork terrine with Cognac and cranberries, pastrami, prosciutto, corned beef, pepperoni, beef jerky—all are house-made. So is the bresaola: thin-sliced outside round that is marinated for a week in salt, red wine, oranges, lemons, and rosemary from Sebastian’s garden, and which marries well with arugula, olive oil, and shaved parmesan.

Zack Campbell (like the soup, he says), 26, trained as a chef, but when he heard about Sebastian’s way with meat, he wanted to learn. There are not, he says, many places to learn those skills, and he feels fortunate that Sebastian agreed to train him. Now he brines the hams, makes the bacon, and does all other forms of charcuterie.

At 5 feet 2 inches tall, 120 pounds, Monika Nair might require help hoisting a hog onto the table, but that’s about the only thing she’ll ask the guys to help her with. This 28-year-old can wield a hacksaw and love every minute of it. She cuts little pork chops and baby back ribs, two hams, thick bacon, picnic shoulder, and Boston butt, and saves the head for headcheese.

Ten years ago, Monika attended the Culinary Arts program at Vancouver Community College and came close to withdrawing from the program when she had to do a course in butchering. A vegetarian at the time, she decided to make the transition to meat-eater because, she says, she didn’t want to stunt her growth as a chef. Just over a year ago, through a twist of events, she helped Sebastian for a couple of weeks, grinding beef and chicken. When he called to ask her if she could work full time, she said, “Of course, but you know I don’t know anything about butchering.” He replied, “I’ll train you.”

Butchering, Monika says, helps her appreciate food. She’s changed her view of cooking as she plays around with different cuts of meat. A year ago, before Sebastian’s, she would have chosen tenderloin, but now, she picks blades. Butchering is the other side of what she knew as a chef, and the experience has been like going back to school. She reads, researches, and calls dibs on the certified organic hog when it comes through the door. (She admits she was scared the first time she had to cut up a pig, and had thought, “I’m just a girl; what am I doing?”)

In the shop, she meets people who appreciate what Sebastian offers. When she worked in the kitchen at Le Crocodile, she didn’t have the personal one-on-one interaction with customers. Now she can suggest cuts of meat, answer questions, and offer cooking instructions. “But customers will talk to the guys before they’ll talk to me,” she says. “They’ll ask for French-cut pork chops and Sebastian will say, ‘Get Monika to do it,’ and the customers look at me with doubt.” She feels like a pioneer stepping into new territory.

They all love food. They talk food all day. And never tire of the passion and combined effort. They greet customers by name. “Small quantity, high quality, regular customers,” says Sebastian.

Yes, he has a website. “People say, ‘Why does a butcher need a website?’ and I say, ‘because it’s what we do, not what we sell.’” It’s going back, he says, to the time when the neighbourhood butcher cut steaks, roasts, and chops from hanging carcasses, handed a child a slice of salami, and saved the hanger steaks for special customers. “The art of butchery is kind of cool,” he says. “We are doing something not many people know how to do.”

Sebastian & Co Fine Organic Meats: 2425 Marine Drive, West Vancouver, 604-925-1636, www.sebastianandco.ca

Arlene Kroeker is a food columnist who has never been, and will never be, a vegetarian.  She admits that after her first visit to Sebastian’s, she ate an entire bag of beef jerky on the way home. That, she is sure, she’ll do again.