Boss Hog
A Rare-Breed Butcher Shop on the LES

Looks like you’re going to graduate grilling season with honors.

Advanced Marinating: A. Bun Studies: A-. Potato Salad Sciences: A+.

But now it’s fall. The barbecue has been put away. And it’s time to turn your attention to all-new scholarly pursuits.

Like rare cuts of pig and fresh-from-the-farm turkey gizzards.

Greet Heritage Meat Shop, protein purveyor to the culinary stars and your new neighborhood heirloom butcher, now open.

Used to be, the only way to get these particular pasture-raised chops was to order over the Internet, eat at Gramercy Tavern or change your last name to Batali. However, when a little butcher-shop-friendly spot suddenly opened up at the Essex Street Market, all that changed.

So now any time (lunch, before Sunday football, immediately after a shower) you have a hankering for red-wine-cured salumi, hickory-smoked Tennessee bacon or half a goat, there’ll be a butcher block with your name written all over it. On a daily basis, they’ll rotate stock cuts, with some of the very best bits ending up between freshly baked Roberta’s bread as sort of a curated charcuterie sandwich.

And if you can’t find your favorite slab of meat in house or on the handwritten blackboard, they’ll be more than happy to specially order it. This goes for whole animals, commissioned hot links or the very same pork shoulder used at Momofuku.

Anything Chang can do, you can do better.