It's What's for Dinner

At specialty shops like Brooklyn's Meat Hook, hipster parents and earnest "gastronauts" attend cult butcher Tom Mylan's weekly lessons in how to cut up animals. Julie Powell, who defined a generation of food bloggers in Julie and Julia, has written a sequel about chasing her sorrows away at the carving block. Shops like Fleischer's, in Woodstock, N.Y., or Taylor's, in Sacramento, Calif., have sold out butchering demos and are planning more, inspired by the response of rapt locals. "This was a great value and a great experience," a local attorney told the Sacramento Bee, at one such event, adding, "Meat doesn't come from shrink-wrapped packages."

I would let them in on a secret, but I don't want to ruin it for me - butchers never went away. At least not in White neighborhoods. Here in SanTana, if I go to Northgate Gonzalez Markets, they ahev a meat counter with guys behind it, who will get into a discussion with you of what you want to make, how you are going to cook it, how many people you're serving, and then they make a recommendation and fresh cut it right there. They even speak ingles, or at least enough to get you your meat.

Want seafood? See me - I can hook you up with a killer Vietnamese market for that . . .