Local Reno, Nevada Retailer Needs Your Help Now.

Butcher Boy Meats and Deli filing for Chapter 11? Impossible? Unfortunately no it isn’t.

Clint Jolly, family and long time employees have been successfully running a great local business for more than 30 years, having come originally from Ely, Nevada, and been a valuable part of the Reno, Nevada community.

Times, they are changing though. Whole Foods opens up the street. The economy takes a serious downturn … and just as Butcher Boy Prime, the new upscale location on South Virginia Street gets ready to greet a second year.

This is just plain wrong. Unfortunately, I feel like I’m just another loyal customer who defected to the new, the novel and forgot about what really counted … our longtime ‘family’.

As a survivor of advanced breast cancer, getting meat that is hormone free is very important, but more than that, I can get a diverse variety of wild game and grass fed beef aged to perfection at Butcher Boy. For those of you who have only known meat that comes in a styrofoam tray with plastic over the top, you have a real treat in store.

My father used to have meat custom ordered for us when I was a kid. His theory was dry aging (hanging in the air) for up to 30 days meant the most flavorful beef possible. He was right, too. This was the kind of meat I remember as a kid in Kansas, Colorado and Utah 40 years ago. You simply don’t know if you haven’t tried it.

It’s also about sustainability.

Grass fed and properly finished beef, as my family has raised it for almost 80 years back in Parsons, Kansas is moral, ethical, healthy and darn tasty. It has many of the essential amino acids and nutrients that ‘feedlot’ beef doesn’t have. My late uncle Robert made sure to drive me through the feedlots of Kansas years ago. It was a horror. Dead calves mashed into the mud and muck. Sick cattle. Downers.  He explained to me why this was so damn wrong. When I was about 15, I first saw cattle slaughtered. That was tough. My dad didn’t realize I was on the floor of the slaughterhouse with him. But it was more of an education.

We’re carnivores. I like a really great piece of beef … a properly sized portion, which for me is four to six ounces. Humanely raised and slaughtered, and then properly ‘processed’.

My point is this: At Butcher Boy, you can talk to Ken Jolly himself, or anyone of many other knowledgeable butchers about just where that meat came from and how it was processed. You’ll know it was done right. And when you taste it, you’ll know that you, for once, really got your moneys’ worth.

Think about it like this, if you only need the right portion per person, then quit worrying so much about the price per pound. Concern yourself with the quality per pound.

By the way, Butcher Boy has some mighty fine seafood. Being born and raised in south Florida, it isn’t many places where I can find fresh line caught Florida Grouper. And if you’ve never had that, you haven’t lived. The Butcher Boy selection of sauces and spices ain’t nothin to sneeze at either ( except maybe the pepper!). I get my favorite black Hawaiian smoked sea salt there which is wonderful on freshly baked flat bread, and the smoked pepper enlivens many of my dishes.

I’ll tell you, next time I’m in Whole Foods and looking at the meat counter, I’m going to pass it by (as nice as it truly is) and take that meat trade down the street where it belongs.