For now, Bounty’s butcher shop is open only on Saturday afternoons, offering meat, poultry, and some prepared foods.
When Tony and I stopped by the recently opened butcher shop located inside Bounty on Broad, he purchased a pair of thick and beautiful rib-eyes and several smaller bavette steaks. I went for a container of duck fat.
“What do I make with it?” I asked Chef Jackson Kramer, who was manning the meat counter while prep chefs readied the restaurant for Saturday dinner service.
“Cook your potatoes in it, your vegetables. You can cook everything in duck fat,” he said, making me feel more confident with his upbeat enthusiasm. “It’s the best.”
Open from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, the butcher case on the restaurant’s first floor offers a cornucopia of fresh meats, along with a few ready-to-eat options such as andouille sausages and duck leg confit.
“We have some sweetbreads, because a customer requested them,” Kramer said, running through the contents of the case: steaks; pork shanks, chops, and tenderloins; hormone and antibiotic free chickens; and marinated quail, ready to toss into a hot pan for an easy and delicious supper.
The restaurant’s pork is a cross between Berkshire and Hampshire hogs from Marshall Bartlett at Home Place Pastures in Como, Mississippi. The heritage breed was popular with Tennessee farmers in the early 1900s, Jackson said.
“We tried it out for some specials in the restaurant yesterday, and it was awesome,” Kramer said. “We are getting the whole bone-in loin and cutting it up in-house.”
The butcher shop also is selling some unexpected options, such as caul fat, the thin honeycomb of fat that holds the stomach organs of cows, pigs, and sheep in place. Used as a casing, caul fat is almost magical, rendering slowly while cooking.
“A lot of people wrap meat loaf in caul fat,” Kramer said. “It holds in all the moisture and flavor.”
Selections at Bounty’s butcher shop will change some week-to-week, as Kramer continues to research local and regional suppliers. “We want people to come and get ideas about what to cook at home,” Kramer said.
For now, the shop is open only on Saturdays, but look for extended hours to Thursday and Friday afternoons later this spring.
Butcher Shop at Bounty on Broad, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays; 2519 Broad Ave. (901-410-8131)
