A MATCH MADE IN HOG HEAVEN
by Reese Arden
What’s better than enjoying beers and brats with your friends? Nothing. That’s exactly why The Butcher & The Bar was created.
“Our goal is to provide a ‘premium, not pretentious’ experience for our guests. From our food to our bar program, we offer only the finest and freshest ingredients,” said co-owner Eric Anderson. “We emphasize hospitality—much more than just good service. We want our guests to feel like they are hanging out at a friend’s house, relaxing and having a good time. We don’t push to turn tables, like so many other places do. Our goal is to enhance the guest experience without interfering with it.”
Without interfering with quality products, to boot, which makes it more than just a butcher shop and more than just a bar. The Butcher & The Bar is a whole animal butcher shop, meaning that they have an amazing and amazingly fresh supply of beef, pork and other products that are cut and prepared as needed. This keeps their hand-crafted and handcarved items very fresh, with minimal handling and processing. In fact, they work with five local farms in Florida and get their beef and pork delivered personally from the ranchers themselves. So if you want to know where your meat came from, what the animal ate and how old it was — heck, probably even the animal’s favorite napping tree — they can tell you.
On top of that, they’re a 100% scratch kitchen. The team dry ages, cures and smokes their meats and make everything in house including their sausages, mayo, ketchup and pickled goods. Even more impressive, they do this on the daily because their menu, which includes Butcher Bites (American-style tapas meant for sharing), craft sandwiches, Butcher’s Cut (weekly steak special served as a composed dish) and sweets, changes daily.
Depending on when you go, you could try the Meat Sheet and drool over summer sausage, beef pepper stick, country terrine, kielbasa, pickles and crostini. Or maybe the pickles and pimento, or the Brussels sprouts (made with bacon, whiskey, maple syrup and sherry vinegar) suit your fancy? You simply cannot go wrong if you get the Butchers Burger, which is a house-ground beef smash burger with lettuce, tomato, griddled onions, pickles, cheddar cheese and special sauce on a brioche bun that will definitely juice down your face… and your hands… and your arms… (and you won’t even care because it’s that damn good). Even if you can’t stay for lunch, dinner or Sunday brunch, you can stop in and go crazy with their butcher case items and have your own sausage party at home.
Hungry? Understandable. But let’s not forget about the cocktails.
The team not only prides themselves on offering riffs on old school cocktails, but they are also proud to offer high-end bourbon, whiskey and tequila.
Following suit with their food, they put a delicious emphasis on local and regional providers for their wine, spirits and beer, as well as use only premium ingredients and fresh squeezed juices.
“Our goal is to ensure our customers get only the finest quality product,” Anderson said. And who better to dish out the finest quality product than local chef and now The Butcher & The Bar executive chef, Jessie Steele, who you might recognize from 32 East and Dada.
With just a little more than a year of dishing out meaty chops for your gaping, hungry chops, The Butcher & The Bar team is proving that they are achieving what they set out to do: to treat their patrons like friends and feed them like family.
510 E Ocean Ave, Unit 101, Boynton Beach
