Tim Forrester walks out from behind the counter of his shop, Harlem Shambles, with stains on his white shirt and apron. The amount of blood on each employee’s uniform makes it clear who has been working on the cow that came in earlier that morning. Before shaking my hand, Forrester removes a small fleck of meat from his thumb.
In the three years that Harlem Shambles has been operating out of its location on 116th and Frederick Douglass, Forrester—who opened the shop with his brother—has not only developed a dedicated clientele, but has turned Harlem Shambles into one of the last true butcher shops in the city. “We wanted to set up a place that does a lot of custom cutting—stuff you can’t get in the grocery store,” he tells me. Indeed, customers often come to Forrester with requests for cuts that are foreign to grocery store meat aisles, and, sometimes, to Forrester himself. “We had one French customer come in and ask us for a pavé cut. I didn’t know what it was, and spent hours researching it so I could get it for him.” Pavé, he discovered, is a small cut of meat taken from the back leg of the cow. “It’s a lean medallion,” he says, describing the cut, which is now regularly available in his shop.
Forrester takes pleasure in introducing new cuts to customers. The most popular at the moment is the Denver cut, taken from the shoulder. “It behaves a lot like a strip steak and has good marbling, but it’s less expensive.” Another hot item at Harlem Shambles is the Spider Steak, a 5-7 ounce cut from each side of the hip. Forrester’s small operation is what allows him to access these cuts. “There’s no way a USDA plant is going to slow down and pull a five ounce cut.”
When a cow arrives at Harlem Shambles—each one weighing usually between 800 and 850 pounds—it has already been separated into the four primals: the shoulder chuck, the loin, found between the rib and the hip, the rib, and finally the back leg round. Forrester takes on the primals using either a large scimitar-like blade for larger cuts and for sawing short ribs into smaller sections. For nearly everything else, he uses a six-inch Victorinox knife.
One of the first steps is to take the belly off the hind, and to saw the loin off so he can hang the meat. Next, he will remove the belly fat, which is moist and can grow mold beneath it if it stays attached to the beef for too long. Similarly, the fatty layer of brisket is filled with glands and a few blood clots, which must all be removed.
Organs don’t keep for very long, so once they are removed from the cow, they go right into the display case. By now, Forrester has learned what his clients will want, so the popular Denver cut and skirt steak get taken off the cow right away, as those, along with the oxtail, will sell immediately. The whole quarters of the cow are then hung from the ceiling, and taken down for trimming once a customer requests a particular cut.
The way in which Forrester prepares Harlem Shambles’ ground beef is part art, and part mad science. Because he does not need to satisfy the supermarket chuck standard labeling, he can choose cuts that yield a desirable mix of lean meat to fat, and also grind to taste. Forrester usually throws in trim from other cuts, calf muscle—which gives the meat a beefy, lean taste—and finally balances the mix with the fattier cow navel cut. Nothing goes to waste at Harlem Shambles; not only do they sell the beef fat for cooking, but some members of the Shambles team have even started experimenting with making candles and soap.
Forrester is not merely a butcher; he dispenses cooking advice, prepares charcuteries, and works on the cows himself. Under his leadership, things run smoothly at Harlem Shambles. “We haven’t had any serious injuries,” he says. “Yet.”
Photo credit: Lauren Kallen