Max is the part-time worker; brother
of the owner, Burt. A short, mustached, slightly grizzled, energetic man, Max and
I took to each other immediately. He’s
constantly moving; constantly cleaning up Tommy’s mess. . . . Max and I are
like the laborers—the grunts—we got along like old friends after only a few
hours together. And after a few weeks Burt
started referring to Max as my “boyfriend.”
For example: “Your boyfriend
slept through his Sunday shift and never called, so Grace took his Sundays
away.” I try to go in on Saturdays now.
I went
to the zoo with my family this morning for my mom’s birthday. We stopped to look at these huge cattle-like
animals called Banteng. And I’m staring
at these things, thinking, Man, I wonder
how big their ribs are . . . they’ve gotta be a foot long at least . . . I bet
they taste good. . . .
I’m on rub duty today; making large
bags of pork/poultry rub, beef jerky rub, and bacon cure. Measuring and weighing granules by a
hundredth of an ounce, like a diabolical sorceress or a deranged meth cooker. For me, it’s all part of the process; I am
fascinated by the huge tubs of salt, sage, pepper, and paprika. We have a garbage can—a garbage can—of brown sugar.
But it’s not like the kind that you buy in the grocery store that’s sticky
and almost moist; this brown sugar is dry because it has the molasses
removed. It stores better and keeps
longer.
Tommy is smoking in his “office” and
watching me. “Why are you doing
that? Why is Burt trying to make you his
bitch? This isn’t what you wanna do; you wanna cut meat. When am I gonna get you for the day? When are you going to be all mine?” This is the first time Tommy has expressed
any interest in teaching me anything. The
last part is not spoken jokingly; he never breaks character and speaks in his
usual monotone, which actually makes it funnier.
“Can you break down a full side of
beef?”
“Yes, that’s what we used to get
when I first started here.”
So the knowledge is there . . . all I
have to do is get it out of him, and
into me.
Tommy’s the grandson of the original
owner—the one the shop’s named for. From
what I understand, the shop passed to his dad, his dad didn’t do so well with
it, and Tommy didn’t really have the business know-how to take it over and fix
it. He’s been a butcher all his life; he
knows meat, but nothing of finances, marketing, etc. So three years ago they sold the shop to Burt
and his wife Grace. They kept the name,
and kept Tommy on because they knew little of meat cutting themselves.
Tommy is sort of like middle management
from a different department: he does
what he pleases, we work together and help each other out when needed, but he
can’t really act as our superior or give us orders. He mostly helps customers, then sits in his
office—a small shadowy corner behind the spice rack—and smokes cigarettes while
Max and I trim ribs and wash dishes in back.
He and Max razz each other a lot; Tommy is always giving Max “spelling
tests” because he knows Max isn’t great with spelling. Somehow I suspect Tommy might be a bit more
serious in his razzing of Max than Max is towards him. But Max takes it all good-naturedly.
Tommy tries to do the same with me—he
always orders green peppers on his pizzas so he has been trying to convince me
that he’s a vegetarian, even though I’ve seen him eat plenty of meat. He also tells me that he doesn’t drink, as if
I can’t recognize the signs of a hangover every Saturday or Sunday when I come
in exhibiting the same symptoms. I play
along; I want to see how stupid he actually thinks I am.
It
didn’t take long for me to figure out that Tommy didn’t want to teach me. He wasn’t there the day I asked about
apprenticing; Burt was stoked to have me, and maybe Tommy felt like Burt kind
of brought me in behind his back. It’s
not that Tommy doesn’t like me, he likes having me around just fine, but I
don’t think he signed on to be a teacher—didn’t like the idea of the extra
responsibility. Not everyone is cut out
for it (I tried tutoring in college and was horrible at it), and I think he
sort of equates it to babysitting. I
think he wants me to prove myself first; once I can show that I’m capable with
a knife, then he’ll show me some things I don’t know. So I was surprised to hear him say he wanted
to have me for a day; I must’ve done something right.
I
thought at first that maybe Tommy didn’t like me. My first day there, he asked me a bunch of
questions. Like, a bunch. Pretty detailed and
personal, too; like, what floor do I live on in my apartment building, how many
neighbors do I have, do I like my neighbors, what year make and model car do I
drive? Apparently that’s his way of
showing someone he likes them; Max told me he wouldn’t ask if he didn’t like
me.
Sometimes
when I’m in back cutting by myself, Tommy will wander in just to see what I’m
doing. He won’t say anything. He’ll grab my knife, look at it, and walk
off with it, with me calling after him, “Hey—I like
my knife!” So I start looking around for a new one, even though there was nothing wrong with the other one. Then I hear the sound of the sharpener coming from out front; he’ll bring it back, and say, “Here, now
try it.”
My
second or third day there, he asked me to make a pitcher of Crystal Light for
him. I crossed my arms and just glared
at him, then said, “Apparently you don’t know the difference between an intern and an apprentice.” I made it for
him anyways, though.
A
few weeks later, as we were getting lunch ready (I made a bunch of bacon on the
griddle for BLTs), he poured me a soda—from his personal stash in the
cooler. I’m not typically a soda
drinker, but I knew better than to refuse this act of kindness. He didn’t pour anyone else a soda.
Later
on he saw me packaging rubs for the front of the store—measuring them into
containers, putting stickers on them, and wrapping them in plastic wrap so they
didn’t spill—and he yelled at Max, “Why is she doing that? She’s an apprentice,
not an intern.” Little did he know that Burt had assigned me
that task, and it was not one which I would attribute to Intern.
After
that he started shaking my hand at the end of every shift, thanking me for my
help, acting very formal . . . too
formal.
Yesterday Burt asked me if I’d mind
signing a waiver.
“We were talking with our insurance
agent, and . . . happened to mention that we had taken on an unpaid employee .
. . and they kind of freaked out. ‘Cause
if something were to happen . . . you could own us. Not that I think you ever would—I’d accept
your word with a handshake.
Unfortunately, the insurance company won’t.”
I was flattered he trusted my word
after only knowing me a few months, and of course I agreed to it.
Burt is a huge food geek like me, which
is why he loves having me around. More
than the others, he is willing to teach me, and he enjoys it. He brined some pork steaks one day and taught
me what a pellicle is: when you brine
something, you have to take it out of the brine and let it dry on a rack for
several hours before cooking. During the
drying, the outside of the meat becomes very sticky—that’s the pellicle. It causes smoke to adhere to the meat much
better during cooking. And everything we cook at
the shop is smoked. He came in really
excited when he learned what it was to sous-vide something and had me watch a
video and read a bunch of articles about it online. Basically you vacuum seal meat in a plastic
bag and cook it in a water bath at a low temperature for a really long
time—that way the meat is cooked the same all the way through.
In general Burt and Grace just seem like
a nice middle-aged couple. Grace does a
lot of the bookkeeping, and also helps customers. She’s a loud talker—petite—with all-grey,
shoulder-length bobbed hair. That’s
about all I got on Grace; I haven’t spent much time with her yet.
Before they bought the shop, Burt was an
office worker dude who entered barbecue competitions in his free time, and
discovered he was pretty good at it. One
day someone asked him if he did it professionally, and without missing a beat
he said yes. That got him a big catering
gig that he had neither the space nor the resources to manage, but he enlisted
the help of his family and they somehow got it accomplished, then decided to never do that again. Then someone told him about the shop going up
for sale, he put in an offer, and it became his life.
We chop up an onion, and some red
and yellow peppers for some unseasoned pulled beef Burt has already
smoked. Sauté the veggies in oil for a
bit, add them to the meat, along with Burt’s garlic-salt-pepper seasoning mix
and the house steak sauce. I ask him
what’s in it—it smells pretty vinegary—but he wasn’t giving up the goods. He tells me to put on gloves and mix it all
together. I don’t know what my face must’ve
looked like, but as I was muddling around with my hands in this meat he said, “You
like to play with your food, don’t you?”
I grin sheepishly and nod my head.
The beef is packaged in one-pound
foil containers and goes in a freezer out front. Grace said their pulled beef is her favorite
thing they sell in the shop, so I keep one aside for tonight’s dinner. I have seafood gumbo—the best batch Burt
claims he’s ever made—at home as well. Both
taste superb, and I have it on good authority that the beef makes a splendid
breakfast when topped with a runny egg.
Tune in next time for another
adventure from The Butcher’s Apprentice.
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