Tom Daly has a passion for meat, and it’s already evident by the time he waxes philosophical on the variety of ways to humanely kill and clean a pig.
Daly is the lead butcher at Savenor’s Market, which is, according to Boston Magazine and WGBH’s Boston A-List, the best butcher shop in Boston. Transitively, Daly must be the best butcher in Boston, no? I ask him for some advice on how to pick the perfect steak in time for grilling season. His eyes light up.
“Grilling the perfect steak? See, there are lots of ways to go about that. Only problem is, this is Boston — not a lot of people are able to barbecue.” Daly recounts a time when he smoked meat on his rooftop. Boston Fire Department promptly confiscated the smoker and handed him a $200 fine.
“They don’t give it back,” says Daly, pictured on the far right with his fellow butchers.
“We encourage people to try dry-aged. It preserves itself, tenderizes the meat and never soaks in its own blood.” The dry-aging process endows the meat with a stronger, more robust flavor. Savenor’s only offers dry-aged steaks in the summer.
For those unsure of their grilling skills, Daly recommends, as a general rule, the thicker the better.
“First thing I’d do is get a thick cut, an inch and a half. Anything under that will cook too quick.”
Savenor’s refrigerated cases of meat are lined with sauces and spice rubs, one made by an elderly woman in her basement in Nantucket.
“Everything we have here is to accomodate something in the case,” like the chimichurri marinade, made on the premises, for the steaks or the garlic rosemary sauce for the butterfly leg of lamb.
In the summer, Savenor’s litany of miscellaneous meats receives more attention than any of its steaks: camel, elk, llama, venison, goat, buffalo, alligator, python and rattlesnake. Daly reveals that ground rabbit functions much like ground chicken, and kangaroo and ostrich basically taste the same.
“Both are from Australia, eat the same thing, taste the same,” says Daly. When I ask which mainstream meat kangaroo is comparable to, Daly responds without hesitation, “Hanger steak.”
In conjunction with its rise in popularity in recent years, Savenor’s offers Vermont Kobe beef – intensely marbled meat from the wagyu cattle, or Angus-wagyu crossbreeds in the United States. But if you’re inexperienced on the grill and don’t want the pressure of screwing up a $50 steak, Daly recommends the ground Kobe, at $9 for a sizable lump.
“You get more flavor out of that meat than you’d ever expect,” says Daly. Savenor’s standard ground beef is made from the leftover cuts: prime grade chuck, ribeye, sirloin, even tenderloin.
Savenor’s offers a dizzying variety of sausages – Daly recommends the lamb apricot sausage – as well as fresh seafood. Stick with dense, thick fish for grilling, like Chilean sea bass or tuna, and shy away from more delicate, flaky fish like cod. Daly even grills soft shell crab, with a little Old Bay seasoning, white wine and garlic.
After he explains why Scotland is the only place on Earth where you sell something (“You see when we get it, there’s still buckshot in the ass. We have to warn people.”), and how he uses blueberry beer to reinvent the trite beer-can chicken, Daly takes me across the street to Charles Street Liquors to show me their impressive selection of local beers. Another butcher tells me it’s the best liquor store in the city. And it’s when he tells me how to check if your homemade moonshine will turn you blind or not, I realize: if you can’t trust this guy with your meat, who can you?
Savenor’s Market has two locations at 160 Charles St. in Boston and 92 Kirkland St. in Cambridge.
