Improve your Easter and Passover meals with meats from these butchers
Mardi Gras has become a marker of sorts for “the before.” We celebrated with packzi, the jelly-filled Polish doughnut, and now we are living through the coronavirus shutdown, waiting for “the after,” unsure when it will arrive.
Yet here we are in April: Passover started Wednesday night, coinciding with Easter weekend. In other years, we would make a reservation at restaurants like The Lobster Shop or Pacific Grill to relish an epic Easter brunch. Instead, we can either order takeout or cook at home.
Many of the Easter menus floating around, including at Farm 12 in Puyallup and Table 47 in Gig Harbor, have already sold out. So we’re sticking with the home-cooking side of the coin this weekend.
At Dave’s Meat & Produce, owner Dave Clogston said he has been fielding plenty of requests for brisket, a focal point of a traditional Seder meal. He’s not sure that everyone buying up the smoked meat is partaking in Passover, but the weather has been amenable to outdoor cooking.
“The sun has really brought out the barbecuers this week,” he told The News Tribune in a phone call. “Everything that’s ‘barbecue-able’ is really popular.”
He had just returned to the store after delivering an Easter ham to a customer. Dave’s doesn’t usually offer that service, but Clogston was feeling especially appreciative of the Tacoma community right now.
“Somebody had bought a lot of meat, and somehow the ham got left in the cooler,” he said, adding that the community was precisely why he bought the meat shop in February from one of the original owners, Derek Kipapa, who continues to ease the transition.
For the holiday weekend, Dave’s has added three special items to the menu: a pre-cooked ham for $5.99 per pound, lamb shanks for $7.99 a pound and leg of lamb for $8.99 a pound.
Though the shop usually keeps a few cuts of lamb in the freezer, these options are fresh. Stock up on beer, wine and cheese here, too.
For another meat you can’t find readily at the grocery store, try the vast array of bison at Tatanka Takeout in Ruston.
“Beef’s the four-letter word around here,” joked owner Nathan Thomas, who fell in love with bison after working in restaurant kitchens.
“I can’t go back to cooking beef and duck and lamb,” he said. Bison, on the other hand, is “a cleaner meat.”
He sources free-range and grass-fed meat, traits often touted by other brands but not always entirely true. Some ranches finish feeds with corn shortly before slaughter, says Thomas.
He buys all of Tatanka’s bison from Grand River Buffalo Ranch in Mobridge, South Dakota, a town of 3,500 people along the Missouri River, not far from the Standing Rock reservation.
This weekend, hurry over to grab the hot commodity that is a bison ribeye. Each bone-in steak clocks in around 12 to 13 ounces at $17 per pound.
On the home grill or a cast-iron skillet on the stovetop, “I just go really traditional on those: just a little salt and pepper, sear each side and let it rest,” said Thomas. “You just want to get a nice seal on it. The thing about bison compared to beef is that it will cook really fast because it’s a leaner meat. A little less time, a little less heat and just don’t walk away from it.”
NEW CUSTOMERS AT TACOMA MEAT SHOPS
Both Tatanka and Dave’s have seen business drop a bit during the stay-at-home orders, even though one has “takeout” in its name and the other is a retail store.
“It’s weird,” admitted Thomas. “It’s really just day to day, kinda like our lives right now. One day can be really busy, and the next day I’m here just searching on YouTube for funny dog videos.”
He has been selling far more take-and-bake lasagnas, which he makes entirely in-house save for the pasta itself. The frozen trays feed six to nine people for $39.95.
The silver lining, perhaps, has been attracting folks who might have overlooked such specialty shops in the past. Since Clogston took over Dave’s in February, he has tried to engage with the community on social media. The timing of that effort has paid off.
“Since this started, there’s a lot of new faces and a lot of new shoppers,” said Clogston. “But we have such a core of shoppers who have been coming here for years and years. A lot of people do comment that they are thankful that we’re open.”
TATANKA TAKEOUT
▪ 4915 N. Pearl Street, Ruston, 253-752.8778, tatankatakeout.com
▪ Details: Wednesday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 7 p.m.
DAVE’S MEAT & PRODUCE
▪ 1312 N. I St., Tacoma, 253-280-9999, facebook.com
▪ Details: Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (closed Easter Sunday)
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This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 2:00 PM.