craft butcher – Memphis Flyer

Russell Smith, Miss Cordelia’s general manager, was impressed with the store’s history as a leader in the locally sourced food movement, but felt it had missed some key opportunities.

“Having a local meat source is something I was always interested in,” Smith says. “We had the equipment. It was just a question of figuring out how to shift from conventional beef and pork that comes in a box to bringing in sides of beef and whole hogs.”

To that end, Aaron Winters is one of Smith’s secret weapons in the campaign to enhance his store’s image. Winters has been charged with transforming the store’s meat counter into a craft butcher shop stocked entirely with locally sourced meat in addition to a range of house-made sausages, salumis, and smoked delicacies ranging from bacon to spicy tasso ham.

“With his background as a chef, Aaron’s been an awesome fit,” Smith says, describing the shift from buying primal cuts to sides of beef and whole hogs. “His cooking ability allows us to use all the animal — especially with hog because of the things you cure and things you smoke.”

“We only use farmers we know,” Winters says. He’s spent time working at Claybrook Farms, Newman, and Homeplace to determine whether or not the operations are truly sustainable. “I want to know the animals have had a happy life,” he says.

Even the humble ground beef at Miss Cordelia’s is currently being processed from a dry-aged cow. “So it’s not the yuck and the trim that’s been sitting in a bag for six months,” Winters says.

Justin Fox Burks

Aaron Winters, Miss Cordelia’s secret (meat) weapon

It may not always be evident on grocery store shelves, but there’s so much more to a cow than ribeyes, strips, chuck roasts, and tenderloin. Winters’ array includes lesser-known cuts like the bavette, inside and outside skirts, and spider steaks — the stuff people don’t know because it usually ends up in grind. Similarly, Winters, who trained in Italy, breaks his pigs down in a more European fashion. Nothing goes to waste. Soup bones not being frozen and sold are roasted and turned into rich, house-made stocks. Smoked ham hocks, bacon, and maple breakfast sausage are available all the time.

“I love tasso,” says Winters, who’s made his own version of the South Louisiana delicacy a staple of Miss Cordelia’s meat counter. “People think of it as a super spicy, smoked little chunk of meat that they throw in greens or red beans. My method is a little bit different, so you can slice and put it on sandwiches without completely blowing your head off.”

Beer brats and sweet Italian sausages are kept in stock due to popular demand, but Winters is always making specialty flavors that rotate in and out and run the gamut from Cajun spice, to an Argentinian chorizo.

“I’m making head cheese, pork terrines, capicola, and chicken liver mousse pâté,” he says, announcing plans to add even more specialty items like house-made ham, finocchiona, and lardo di Colonnata.

Winters and Smith are working together to build synergy between Miss Cordelia’s meat counter and its deli. Although only a few items are currently available, a new sandwich menu is on the works. Future offerings will include a pressed Cuban sandwich with cured Cuban-style pork, sour orange, cilantro, peppers, house-made ham, and pickles.

“I want people to tell me what they want,” says Winters, who enjoys preparing custom sausages and other items for his customers.

“It’s an interesting challenge to make people forget what they think they know about us,” Smith says. “Fair or not, this store has always had a reputation for being expensive. What I’m learning, the longer I’m here, is that the thing we can’t compete on are conventional groceries. I can’t sell Cheerios the way Kroger sells Cheerios.

“But we can do stuff like this that just blows other groceries out of the water, and we can be very affordable about it.”

With its black-and-white honeycomb tile and quaint vintage tableware, Porcellino’s — the new restaurant from chefs Michael Hudman and Andy Ticer — strikes an appealingly casual note, one that is matched by its affordable menu.

Porcellino’s is essentially two shops. In the front, there’s an espresso-centric, European-style café where you can order pastries for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and small plates for supper. In the back, there’s a craft butcher shop that features traditional steaks, sausages, and cured meats — plus some truly exotic cuts.

I began with a double shot of espresso — which, for me, is kind of a big deal. I’m pathologically sensitive to caffeine, so I usually draw the line at a single cup of green tea in the morning.

It was worth making the exception. The espresso — a Metropolis Redline blend — was like an awakening. It had a thick, creamy body and a beautiful crema, with notes of honey and lavender in the finish. Pair it with a couple of Bomboloni ($2) — fluffy Italian donuts — and you’re ready to take on the world.

“I want our coffee to be a craft experience,” says head barista Destiny Naccarato. “And that means eliminating guesswork. It means timing everything out, measuring it, weighing it.

“I actually think the first sip should be a little shocking,” she adds.

John Klyce Minervini

Apple Cider

On to small plates. When building their menu, chefs Hudman and Ticer say they were inspired by their friend the late Mark Newman of Newman Farm. The word “porcellino” means “baby pig” in Italian, and many dishes were created to showcase the farm’s heritage pork and lamb.

“We kept asking ourselves,” says Ticer, “why do we have to go to New Orleans to get boudin? Why do we have to go to St. Louis to get decent cured meat? We can do those things at least as well as anybody else. Hell, we can do them better.”

One of my favorite dishes was the Collard Green Dumplings ($9). Loaded with collards from Woodson Ridge Farms, spicy nduya sausage, Calabrian chili oil, and Newman Farm pork belly, these demure little rice paper packets pack a punch. But if you can stand the heat, they’ll reward you. Drizzled with benne oil — an aromatic, nutty oil derived from an heirloom ancestor of the sesame seed — they are interestingly tangy and peppery.

John Klyce Minervini

Ash Flour Pita

For those seeking something less spicy, I recommend the Ash Flour Pita — stippled with melted cheese and marinated olives — or the New Orleans-style boudin, served with pickled onions over corn bread porridge.

But Porcellino’s is first and foremost a butcher shop, so I decided to take a tour with head butcher Aaron Winters.

“You remember how, in The Brady Bunch, they had Sam the Butcher?” asks Winters. “That’s what I want. I want people to say, ‘Aaron’s my butcher.’ I want to start the conversation again.”

Naturally, the conversation will include things like tenderloin and pork chops. But part of Winters’ mission at Porcellino’s is to introduce Memphians to more uncommon cuts of meat. Things like bavette — a strip of beef loin that runs along the ribcage — and spider steak — named for its web-like pattern of marbling.

“In America,” Winters says, “most of these cuts get ground up for hamburger, so we never even see them. Which is a shame, because they are some of the tastiest parts of the whole animal.”

To learn about bavette and spider steak, Winters spent the summer in Italy. There he studied with Dario Cecchini, the world’s foremost master butcher, and Filippo Gambassi, scion of an ancient Italian salumi dynasty.

It probably goes without saying, but Winters is the only person within 300 miles of Memphis with that kind of training. Why don’t you pay him a visit and let him recommend something?