The Butchery

San Diego, CA (The Joy of Food) — If a butcher shop is your idea of a good time, then the Butchery Quality Meats might just be your Disneyland of playgrounds.

When I was growing up in the south of Italy, I was often sent to pick up orders from the butcher shop near our house, where the head butcher would come out with his giant knife and sweaty face, his apron bloodied and disheveled from whatever dead thing (or not) he’d been battling with in the backroom. These horror shows triggered one of my cousins to became a vegetarian. I went in the opposite direction.

The Butchery is a little more respectable and a lot less violent than the places of my youth, a swanky storefront in the middle of hoity-toity Del Mar that borders one end of the mixed-use One Paseo complex, where the rent per square foot probably costs more than my first car. 

There are no carcasses or butcher knives strewn about here, just a long counter with every pig, cow, or other part you could imagine, dry-aged, wet-aged, or however you want it with plenty of deli cuts, fish, and stuff like truffles and rendered duck fat thrown in for good measure. This is where I’ve been known to pick up some guanciale, a little piece of porky goodness served religiously in Italy, but usually the hardest thing to find everywhere else.

The little market is where you can separate from even more of your hard-earned money, stocked with dried pastas, spices, olive oils, fresh baguettes, wines, and craft beers. The selection is small, but complete, and the top-notchness of the ingredients is a given. And in a world of monopolies where everything is becoming the same, a highly curated, specialized shop like this one is a good thing.  

At the in-house kitchen, the classic Italian is my go-to, where they cut open a hoagie roll, dribble some Italian dressing, layer on a few fine meats and some provolone cheese, and press the whole thing together so as to make it something that a human could theoretically bite into. I also like this on some of their artisan flatbread, a split length of bread that’s crispy-flaky on the outer shell and soft on the inside.

If your tastes run toward Angus meats, then the house sandwich is what you will want, with its sliced house marinated steak tips, grilled onions and peppers, and melted American cheese all wrapped up in a fluffy, fresh grinder roll. The steak tips on their own are also splendid, without the fuss of the bread and the toppings to confuse the flavor.

The smoked brisket sandwich is also pretty fantastic, a heaping pile of stuff that involves their juicy, tasty brisket, BBQ-infused aioli, habanero-pickled red onion, mustard seeds, melted pepper jack cheese, and creamy slaw, all balanced within an inch of its life within a fresh pretzel bun. By the way, that shirt you came in wearing will need to be dry cleaned after.

The fries are fine and filling as a side, but I’m more likely to get a salad after eating half a pound of deli meats or steak. The wait for your food can be long, and I’ve seen entire groups walk away because of pouty, screaming kids who need to eat this minute. Plan accordingly: leave the children at home.