|
|||||
Upper West Side: Oppenheimer Meat, RIPAs a number of bloggers (like Serious Eats) have been reporting, Oppenheimer Meats, a mainstay of the Upper West Side, has closed. Now, it looks like owner Robert Pence is going to try to run a retail operation from Hunt’s Point. I for one won’t be calling. I hate to see a neighborhood butcher bite the dust. But, frankly, I get better meat at Citarella and Fairway. Still, best of luck to Pence in his new venture. Here’s the Times story in case you missed it:
OPPENHEIMER MEATS Robert Pence, who has owned this 40-year-old Upper West Side butcher shop since 1996, received a generous offer for the space and closed. He is moving to the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx, where, as part of Master Purveyors, a wholesaler, he will fill retail orders for delivery, starting Monday: (212) 662-0246 or oppenheimermeats.com .
Related posts: 3 comments to Upper West Side: Oppenheimer Meat, RIP |
Follow Food and Things
  
|
||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Food and Things - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
It is folly to say you get better meats at Citarella or Fairway. They are great places but aren’t in the same business that Harry Oppenheimer was and that Bob Pence is. Fairway’s incomparable at what it does best — cheeses and inexpensive produce, and they find wonderful products from around the world — but their butcher operation is basically a wholesale shop and their meat is catch as catch can. You have to search aggressively to find top quality there, and it’s rare. Their aging is just fair (no pun intended). Citarella is still best as the fish shop it started as, and its meat selection relies far too heavily on pre-cut meats that sit in the display case. They will butcher to order, but stock little that is special or extraordinary, and almost all that comes into their building has been pre-butchered down to primal cuts. Pence is an extraordinary guy, the only butcher I know of in NYC with both an academic background in his trade (he went to Cornell) and a restaurant meat buyer’s and chef’s eye on where his product is headed when it leaves the store. Anyone who found his shop, his products, or his service similar to or worse than that of any other butcher in the city simply didn’t experience the full potential it had to offer. This is an IMMENSE loss, up there with the closing of Paprikas Weiss and the demise of the Yorkville Hungarian food community. A watershed. It leaves, really, only the Lobel brothers upholding classic butchering in NYC, at pricxes that are roughly double what Bob’s were.
Thanks so much for your comment. I agree–it’s a huge loss. No one wants to see an independent business go down and butchers, as you point out, are few and far between. I never had much luck with the meat there, but maybe I hit them on a bad day.
[...] neighborhood residents still mourn the departure of Oppenheimer’s last summer. Perhaps the arrival of Schatzie’s will help fill that [...]