Cowboys on the Strand

(Warning: Most everything that follows is politically incorrect. But it’s accurate). Back when I was a teen working as a journeyman meatcutter, the butcher shop was the wild, wild west of the food market. It wasn’t like it is today, when all cuts are pre-packaged elsewhere and no one can tell you much about the different parts of a steer, their different taste profiles, or how to prepare them. Oh hell no.

Back then, you had to be strong enough to heft a whole side of beef (I wasn’t), smart enough to visualize all the various steak cuts in 3D (I couldn’t), supple enough to use a bandsaw without cutting off one of your fingers (used to scare the shit out of me), and deft enough to manage a boning knife well enough to carve the choice bits of leftover cuts into the most profitable item in the store — ground hamburger.

And into this virtual shoot-up at the OK Corral strutted the meatcutters. They brought their own personal set of knives to work, smoked and cussed incessantly, came to drunk hungover if not still drunk, and flirted with every female customer in the store. There’s an old saying that Southerners flirt for fun, not action. Not the meatcutters. Most of them had been married numerous times or were between marriages or between affairs. I don’t know. They tended to be politically conservative and didn’t care about much except for their craft. But they were artists when it came to their craft: Virtuosos, with a liberal helping of bohemianism and sheer craziness.

My meat market of choice in the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv evokes elements of that time of lost things. I like to think it brings its own bit of character into my soul food kitchen.