Toronto’s Meat Revolution

With Cowbell and the Healthy Butcher, T.O.’s meat eaters can be just as smug as vegetarians By Sasha Chapman

In the flesh: Ryan Donovan, a philosophically minded butcher, is leading the guilt-free meat movement
Image credit: Daniel Shipp

It all started innocently enough, with dinner at Cowbell, the unassuming restaurant in Parkdale. The waiter had given us a rundown of the chalkboard menu, which famously lists farmers along with their produce. He told us how the Lake Erie perch had been caught. Where the chicken had been raised. What the steak had once eaten. “Do you want to tell us his name, too?” joked my dinner companion. “George,” deadpanned the waiter, without skipping a beat.

Fifteen years ago, that information would have been enough to send me to the meatless entrée. Back then vegetarians owned the moral high ground. Like so many of my university peers, I tried to forget where my meat came from, preferring to buy bloodless, boneless chicken breasts wrapped in plastic.

How times have changed. That night at Cowbell, the room was filled with self- satisfied carnivores making a virtue out of each bite of sustainability. I know I tucked into George with uncommon gusto. He had been a happy steer, I was sure of it, pastured on grass. Mark Cutrara, the chef, had purchased him directly from Dennis and Denise Harrison’s farm in Bradford. And he had butchered the carcass himself, taking care to make sure that each cut was used to its full potential. The steak was leaner and tougher than the beef I was accustomed to eating, but it seemed a small price to pay for (nearly) guilt-free meat. Without realizing it, I had aligned myself with a growing cult in the city: the cult of the righteous carnivore.

It’s supposed to be a win-win approach to meat: animals are treated better and raised in a more environmentally friendly fashion (the production of local, organic, pastured beef consumes far less fossil fuel than feedlot cattle); farmers are paid more because they deal directly with butchers and chefs; less of the animal is wasted; best of all, the consumer gets to eat a healthier, better-quality steak. At the epicentre of this cult is the Healthy Butcher, a small but politically ambitious Queen West shop that’s beautifully curated, with pretty artisanal breads from Thuet, deep-yellow eggs from local Mennonites and of course an artfully arranged display case of pork, lamb, chicken and beef. What’s different about the Healthy Butcher is that the pig’s ears in the window perched next to the pork tenderloin probably came from the same pig.

Owners Tara Longo and Mario Fiorucci are attempting to operate like an old-fashioned butchery, bringing in whole animals and wasting nothing. Though the store boasts the best chicken and porchetta in town, quality seems almost beside the point. No other food shop in Toronto is working harder to change the way we eat. This is due in large part to the head butcher, Ryan Donovan, a high-minded U of T philosophy grad who believes carnivores have a moral responsibility to eat sustainably.

The shop’s approach can be off-putting to the uninitiated. There was the time I wanted a flattened chicken for the barbecue. The butcher deftly cut out the back and slipped it into the bag with the chicken. It felt like a reproach: “Here’s the waste you’ve created—you find a way to use it.” I took the hint and froze it for stock. A customer may come in looking for a strip loin and leave with a blade steak.

Serious cooks love this uncompromising, holistic ethos. There’s a certain amount of bravado that goes along with breaking down a whole animal: finding a use for every cut is the culinary equivalent of Tetris. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the back of the shop has become a thriving atelier for chefs. Scot Woods of Lucien signed up for an apprenticeship last year, as did Mark Cutrara. “Being there made me believe it was possible to open a restaurant like Cowbell,” he says dreamily, with the kind of nostalgia one reserves for a first love. “It was full of heretics preaching the word of organics and sustainability.”

The shop has developed a devoted following among Queen West idealists, where raw foodists eat chicken sashimi and a growing number of customers prefer the ascetic taste of grass-fed steaks to the highly marbled corn-fattened ones that most of us are used to. But will this same brand of boutique activism work uptown, at the Healthy Butcher’s new shop at Eglinton and Avenue Road? Does north Toronto care about its meat?

Originally published March 2008

8 Comments

Comment on this story

Great article - but sadly the author failed to mention the chef and restauranteur who is credited with beginning the 'nose to tail' movement - Fergus Henderson, owner of St. John Restaurant in London. Fergus' book, Nose to Tail Eating, helped begin a cultural and food revolution in England that has since been exported to great restaurants and butchers around the world, including Toronto. His restaurant opened in 1994, his book followed in 1999.
February 27, 2008 | by alexbono

I'm a Canadian living in England, where there are still some traditional butchers left, and in fact the 'know your animal' ethos is alive and well, at least among us chattering middle classes. Treating all manner of beasties - pork, beef, poultry, sheep - is more than just good for the soul. My motto is 'a happy beastie is a tasty beastie'.
February 28, 2008 | by maierichards

This article made me sick to my stomach. Regardless of how nonhuman animals are treated, it is still incomprehensible that we continue to selectively breed and kill them for no good reason. And, no, taste is not a good enough reason to use an animal as property and kill him or her as we see fit. When it is unnecessary to use an animal--a sentient being with intrinsic value and his or her own interests--as a means to our own ends, to do so is unjust and barbaric. No amount of grass-feeding will change that.
March 2, 2008 | by epskionline

Here is a sentiment I'm very tired of reading and hearing:

"...less of the animal is wasted.." Factory Farms have always used the whole body; all but the squeal and screams. Go read The Jungle written by Upton Sinclair in 1906 be sure to pick up the most recent edition printed in 2006.
Do people honestly think that a whole subset of animals are being slaughtered just to make soaps, camera film and myriad of other animal by-product items? People have no idea to what extent animal by-products are used. If they did they wouldn't be so proud of this butcher. This butcher isn't doing anything new or different. He is just willingly telling people unlike the meat and dairy industry.
If the same people who use the 'waste' phrase applied it to everything else in their lives, the world would be a better place and we wouldn't have an ocean full of plastic.

Frankly the bottom line here is that a life has been snuffed out for an insignificant taste bud and other things that we do not need what-so-ever. I call that a waste.
March 3, 2008 | by CColors

Hi;

I too wanted to eat guilt free meat. We went to Cowbell for dinner and I ordered the 38 dollar rib steak. I expected it to be leaner and a little firmer. What I didn't expect was to pay 38 dollars for about 2 inches of fat right in the middle of my steak. Shameful. A batallion of reviewers are falling over themsleves to praise this restaurant. Yes, it's a great idea. No I don't like to be ripped off.
March 3, 2008 | by likesgoodfood

Please don't delude yourself. There is no such thing as guilt-free meat, at least not to any knowledgeable person with a functioning conscience. See: http://tinyurl.com/22ggu4
March 5, 2008 | by MaryF

http://www.offalgood.com/site/blog/resou...

Read what was happening in California and be thankful that if you're going to eat meat at least with conscientious butchers like the one's you've chosen to mention doing either the butchering and/or selection and overseeing - the sort of thing that was happening to us (and has now been stopped) isn't happening to you.
March 20, 2008 | by DrBehavior

Hate to say it, but the mass food industry is better at using all the "scrap" parts of animals, for pet food, soap, etc. whereas giving extra animal parts to consumers guarantees that much of it will be thrown into landfill or green bin.

And slaughtering a cow is okay, as long as you use every part of her body? Can the same argument be made about other animals, like rabbits, dogs or cats? Is killing more "moral" if you find uses for every bit of the corpse?

At least it's nice to know that these animals are theoretically treated better than in industrial farming. But why not work on reducing meat consumption, which will be better for health, environment, and animals?
June 3, 2008 | by torontocitizen

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