Carve out a relationship with your local butcher

No one wants to disappoint Dad when he asks for a big, juicy steak for dinner on his special day.

So ask your butcher what's good this week.

What? You don't have a butcher? A trusted source for all your meaty requests and inquiries?

Well, you're not alone. At one time every suburban downtown and strip mall had a butcher shop, that place where a brawny guy in a stained white apron greeted you with a firm hand shake while blades whirred behind the swinging doors.

While there are fewer shops these days, those that have survived are ready and willing to welcome you to their world of fresh meat.

"You can kind of tell when people haven't been in before; it can be overwhelming," says Dan Casey, owner of Casey's Food's, a Naperville store that grew from his father's small butcher shop to a general food store.

"We encourage questions. It's a lot to soak in," said Casey, bragging about the dozen full-time butchers who keep the 60-foot-long meat case stocked with 130-plus items.

Questions like what's good this week? Where does the beef, pork, lamb come from? Is it grass-fed? How should I cook this? Those are all questions butchers can answer, and probably in more detail that you could imagine.

Chef Rob Levitt, a Wheeling native now running Mado restaurant, an acclaimed farm-focused eatery in Chicago's Bucktown, believes everyone should have a reliable local butcher.

"The benefit to going to butcher shops is that they have small quantities of high quality meat and they know more about it," Levitt said.

"A good butcher will be less interested in selling the most expensive cut and more interested in building relationships," he said.

"We know 90 percent of our customers by name; we've seen their kids grow up," said Tom Yucius, owner of Butcher on the Block in Lake in the Hills. "They (customers) can talk with the people who are giving them the product."

And people who know the product inside and out.

"When you're cutting cuts of meat off a whole animal, you get a better understanding of how to cook it and why the meat does what it does," said Levitt, an admitted meat "geek" who carves up hogs and more at his restaurant. (His next butchering class is at 12:30 p.m. June 27; details at madorestaurantchicago.com.)

For example, New York strip, tenderloin and rib-eye make up just 14 percent or so of a 1,100-pound cattle carcass. Those limited cuts are therefore the more expensive pieces.

"There are parts of the animal that are so much more economical," he said. "A good butcher will tell you about those, too."

Casey said because customers often want those limited cuts, there aren't local farmers who can provide enough to satisfy the demand. He, for instance, works with an Aurora meatpacker who purchases Midwest-raised animals.

Casey's Foods is one of the few places that still gets meat in "on the hook" with butchers on staff who cut down whole cattle, hogs and lamb. Other shops get in half animals or larger sides of meat that they carve into roasts and steaks,

Yucius said he guarantees his customers meat on the top end of the USDA's "choice" spectrum. The USDA grades are, from lowest to highest, select, choice and prime.

"We send people home with a guaranteed great steak," he said. "At the grocery store, you may get a great steak one week and not the next" because the packaged meat trays come from so many sources.

Buccola said people should consider butcher shops not just for special roasts during the winter holidays, but for every day. Two-inch thick steaks that won't shrivel on the grill, sausages made without artificial ingredients or preservatives and freshly ground beef are summer butcher shop favorites.

"We use whole primal cuts; we don't use just any scraps in our ground beef," Yucius explains. Bulk ground beef might be processed from tons of animal matter, while butcher shop ground beef "might come from one or two animals," explained Brett Buccola, owner of Heybeck's Meat Market in Palatine, Meeske's Prime Meats in Barrington and J&B Meat Market in Arlington Heights.

"When you come into a meat market, you know what you're getting," Buccola said. "We see every single product."

These guys encourage you to find a butcher to call your friend soon, because you don't know how much longer the shop down the road is going to be around.

There are fewer butcher shops in part because there are fewer butchers. Would-be meat cutters don't head to college or culinary school to get a degree in butchery and meat cutting; they get to be butchers through on-the-job training and apprenticeships that stretch three to seven years, Casey said.

"We're a dying breed, meat markets are kind of dinosaurs," Buccola added. "There are not many of us left who have the skills."