Tastebud Chicago

Happy Memorial Day all. We celebrated with pulled pork sandwiches, which will be the subject of our next article. In the mean time, buying the pork butt for the sandwiches was a real adventure. Saturday morning I got up early to get my hair cut downtown. My barber is a nice man named Phil who likes to garden. We talk a lot about vegetables and occasionally cooking. I mentioned that I had a busy morning planned. When I told him I was going to buy a pork shoulder at Jewel, he suggested I go over to Lake Street to a meat packer he knows. Phil came here from Italy when he was in his early 20’s, still has a strong Italian accent, and has never steered me wrong. I worked very briefly near a meat packer there with a retail butcher shop attached to it, and thought it would be pretty cool to buy my meat there.

When I was through with my haircut, I took the business card that Phil’s quiet co-barber gave me and headed to Lake Street, expecting that he was directing me towards one of the packers that welcomes walk ins. I was surprised when I found the address, and only saw a loading dock. The dock was busy with butchers and restaurant buyers, picking up their orders. I couldn’t find a door that looked like a retail door, so I just walked in through the loading dock.

Inside, it was cold, and pretty busy. Guys in white coats were buzzing around carrying bags of meat. A few guys wearing shorts and t-shirts were looking over cuts of meat, figuring out what to take back to their butcher shops or restaurants. A whole pig was hanging from hooks in the ceiling. There were buckets full of pig heads. Kind of gruesome, but also pretty great in a “so this is where meat comes from” kind of way. Although I clearly didn’t belong, I tried my best to fit in. It’s pretty hard though. I’m 6′2”, and have soft computer programmer hands.

I walked up to the counter and asked for a pork butt. The guy behind the register looked pretty incredulous, like “do I look like a friendly man that is going to go find you your butt?” He pointed at the unmarked door to the side of the room and told me that it was the retail shop. I nodded to say, “of course…I know where that is. I just forgot.”

The retail shop had another whole pig hanging from a hook, and more head buckets. The walls were lined with piles of meat. A radio in the corner was tuned to La Ley, and men in white coats were chatting in Spanish as they split cuts of meat with cleavers as big as your head. I eyed the ribs, but remembered I was hear for butt, not ribs. I found the butt department, and then froze. I didn’t see any bags, other than the thank-you-for-shopping bags on a shelf. I looked around, wondering if I was supposed to just pick up the raw pork and put it in my pocket. I stepped back and found someone that looked like they knew what they were doing. He was buying several racks of ribs, probably for a family BBQ, or maybe to sell in a parking lot somewhere. He didn’t look like the kind of guy that would want to help me out, so I just stared at him, hoping he’d buy something so I could watch how it worked.

After poking at ribs (with his bare hands) for a while, he went to a shelf and pulled a pair of plastic gloves from a mysterious box I hadn’t seen before. Then he grabbed a few of the thank-you-for-shopping bags and went back to the ribs. He started piling giant rib racks into the too tiny bags. Meat was hanging off the sides. Then he walked to the cashier in the other room and paid. The whole transaction involved lots of meat touching surfaces. It was disconcerting.

I wanted that butt, to get it, I’d have to just be tough and go grab it. I went to the mysterious box of gloves, pulled out two, grabbed a shopping bag, and went back to the butts. Most of them were in the 10 to 15 pound range. I found one on the bottom of the pork pile that felt like it weighed about five pounds, put it in my shopping bag, grabbed a second bag so that the blood wouldn’t seep out into my trunk, and went to the cashier.

“This all you want? This one piece of ham?”

“Yessir. Just this. Oh, by the way, the barber on Wells Street sent me.”

“Oh. That will be $4″

That’s right folks, a pork butt that would easily cost me $12 cost just $4. Plus, I got this great story. PLUS, now I call pork “ham,” which is pretty cool. So, in short, if you need to buy some ribs or butts anytime soon, don’t be afraid to go to Lake Street. Please don’t tell them I sent you. I’m trying to build up some rep.