Grocery Stores
The Healthy Butcher
Success is a beautiful thing. Such is the case with the new location of The Healthy Butcher in Eglinton West (Avenue and Eglinton).
The second installment of the franchise more than complements the highly successful Queen St. location. In fact, although it's more than twice as big (it's more of a small grocery store than a butcher), it is all about quality not quantity here. On offer at this location is also organic produce (all organic, lots of local), cheeses, oils, bread, and more. Basically everything you find in your average grocery store, minus all the aisles in the middle. If you're the type that does most of your shopping at the perimeter of the big chains, avoiding boxes and bags, you'll be right at home.
Items that caught my attention included fresh Lake Erie pickerel (walleye), duck and other animal lards (where else can you find this stuff?), and artisanal cheeses from Ontario and Quebec (samples of Toscano cheese anyone?).
While there are all sorts of interesting items for sale here, let's not forget the focal reason you'd want to shop here: meat. It's still the focus of the store, offered up through a fully enclosed square meat counter. The manager claims the store's philosophy is about "whole animals", not boxed meat or just traditional cuts you can find at any butcher. That means making an effort to showcase all cuts of meats and educate customers through their displays, website, and newsletter. It's one of the reasons they wanted a store with more space, to "showcase the whole animal".
Meats here comes mostly from Field Gate Organics, a co-operative of small Ontario organic farms, and a few other small local farms. For all the emphasis on healthy meats I was a bit disappointed in their selection of grass-fed cuts, which was limited to only four beef items. The "pasture raised" label is used quite a bit which can be misleading as those animals are usually still grain fed or finished. Not very natural for our herbivore friends. I was also pretty excited to see their hamburger patties on sale for 50% off. Just about to put some in my cart, I asked if there was anything added and was disappointed to hear they contained breadcrumbs. To their credit I was told they sometimes carry gluten-free hamburgers and label them as such. Some might say I'm splitting hairs, but if you are going to pony up for expensive meat then what the heck.
I have to give them credit for a variety of choices rarely seen, including rare cuts of beef like "clodhammer" (rotator cuff) and game meats like elk and venison. And kudos for the to-the-point label on their hot dogs which reads "No garbage added all-beef hot dogs." Imagine that.
When it comes to pricing, it's no surprise that you pay premium, but it's not outrageously expensive. Lean ground beef goes for $1.05 per 100g (or about $4.76 per pound) which is pretty good for premium meat. It goes up from there but they do have specials and can answer questions that would elsewhere get you nothing but strange looks.
At the back, in plain view, is an area dedicated to slicing up and processing all the meat products in the store. It's not much to look at but it's nice to be able to actually see where your meat is being handled. It looks clean and lets you know that they can do up your meat any way you'd like.
If coffee is your thing you don't have make a separate stop or settle for a mediocre brew as the store has its own little cafe in the front corner called Ambrosia Cafe which uses Fresh Coffee Network beans (which are also for sale in bulk). It's nice to see that the beans used and for sale are labeled with a roast date so you know it has been less than a week since they've been replaced.
I left the store feeling pretty satisfied. It's definitely one of my new favorite butchers in the city. I glanced at their mission statement on my way out, "To ensure your food is produced the way nature intended." Pretty close for a store in this city.
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Is it possible for this website to have a single review of a butcher or meat focused restaurant and not have it turn into a debate on vegetarianism vs. not vegetarianism (or murder vs. not murder if you will)?!
People eat meat and people don't. Posting a review of this shop is not a sinister method of forcing one to eat meat, nor is a review of a vegan restaurant or grocery store a sly way of illustrating how 'barbaric' those that eat meat are. This is a public website trying to provide a democratic view of the food options in this city. Enough said.
Leave the debates and picketing to something more worth while, like the mayors latest idiotic idea to get rid of the gardiner or the TTC's lack of service.
Mmm, burgers! I feel like Hitler for cows!
BTW I have as much ethical and emotional trouble when I pick a young healthy lettuce plant out of my garden and eat it alive, as to when I hunt and kill grouse and deer for my own food needs.
I eat vegitarians
You enjoy your veggies ,steamed or with lots of butter,and I will enjoy my steak medium rare. In my house its beef 24/7
m m m m m m good.
So BON APETIT
First let me say that I'm all for eating meat. Your argument for human health by way of eating meat is, however, quite flawed.
If you look at the archaeological record of the "primitive people" you so vaguely refer, they're bones do not generally show much disease or other stress indicators. That means they were healthier, right? Not necessarily; it may be that the diseases that killed them (assuming that they died not from human conflict) moved so quickly that they did not have time to cause bone infections, abscesses, etc., i.e. the kinds of things that are evident in a bone record. These early peoples may not have been healthy enough to fight off such diseases for any length of time.
Along comes increased agricultural practices (read: domestication of both plants and animals) and the formation of highly complex civilizations, and the archaeological record becomes filled with bones that show the effects of all sorts of diseases. This is because agricultural practices made them more more unhealthy, right? It is not likely. These individuals were healthy enough to fight off of the diseases for an extended period of time such that these diseases had time to affect their bones. Put another way, they were healthy enough to live with diseases that may have killed off earlier peoples much more quickly. The preceding is a paraphrase of something called the osteological paradox; go check it out for more info.
Off course there are many factors when determining human health; diet is just one. Genetic make-up and environmental factors are two other significant factors that come quickly to mind. This point also serves to undermine your position that eating meat is large determining factor for health. Since you have not not shown cause and effect, the correlation between meat consumption and over all health may only be a spurious one.
The large point here is that using the human record, as way to make the claim that eating meat equals health, in that way that you have, shows a real lack of understanding of the complexities and nuances of said record.
My own opinion on the matter is that vegetarians can be just a healthy as any one else. It just takes a balanced and well thought out diet; much in the same manner that any meat eater can maintain his or her health through diet.
To simply say meat is murder is hiding behind some extremist green peace slogan. Meat is murder, but so is deforestation, over fishing, using pesticides, burning fossil fuels, the constant use of non-biodegradable plastics. Meat isn't murder, murder is the irreversible damage we do the the planet on a daily.
Meat is food, always has been in some parts of the world, always will be. Everything is good in moderation as it make for sustainable living.
Well it is your right ...
I've tried a lot of their burgers. They all have breadcrumbs (unless purposely made for gluten-sensitive clientele) and are all just plain delicious. Try the Citrus Duck Burger if you don't believe me. Or the Autumn Burger... or the Chicken and Herb, better yet, the Chicken Chipotle. Christ, just send yourself to Burger Heaven and try them all.
One of the reason for the poor selection of grass fed beef is the limited availbility of it and that the supplier has many stores to split a few animals amoung. We grow grassfed beef on our farm for them but we only have small numbers - 1 or 2 animals every few months. Grass fed beef takes longer to raise - we are on the shorter end and ours are not ready till 22-24 months. Also grassfed beef tends not to be as high a grade (not a AAA grade) we normaly produce AA or B3 (B3 being downgraded for lack of external fat cover - so a leaner steak) still very good.