The Butchery
Open: For dinner Wednesday to Saturday 5:30 to 9 p.m., burgers served at dinner and during Butchery store hours, from 11 a.m. to closing daily
Last Friday marked the first time that I made a reservation at a butcher shop.
But then, the Butchery in Bells Corners is the only meat store I know that has a 36-seat eatery smack in its middle.
About two months ago, the well-regarded 35-year-old business removed and relocated its cold storage units that held hams, pates, meat pies and the like. In came the food-court seating.
Mark Cantor holds a rib steak platter from The Butchery on Robertson Road in Bells Corners.
About a month later, dinner service from Wednesday to Saturday began. With that, the Vera’s Burger Shack, the grilling joint inside the Butchery, raised its game beyond its usual very good burgers to offer a limited selection of Butchery steaks and chicken.
This shift is the latest example of the blurring between food stores and eateries that has seen, for example, Farm Boys and Whole Foods stores offer meals to go and even in-store eating.
The reconfigured Vera’s/Butchery offers a very lean version of a steakhouse experience. We’re talking meat and potatoes and very little else. No French onion soup, salads, or other starters. No red wine, just bottomless soft drinks. No creamed spinach or roasted mushrooms on the side, just cole slaw and pickles. No mashed potatoes, just some fine fries. No sauces. No desserts.
For some, it will be the ambience, not the menu, that falls short. When we ate there last Friday, some of us were put off by the view of meat-for-sale showcases. More of us, at our table near the back, disliked the smell of end-of-day disinfectant from the cutting room behind us. Mark Cantor, the business’s manager, told me this week that as of this Friday, cutting-room cleanings will be done later on Fridays — the “worst” day for them, he said — to address this complaint.
But even if the Butchery isn’t the right kind of steak place to celebrate a business deal or a carnivore’s milestone birthday, a meat-loving couple or family might well enjoy tucking into, say, a rib steak platter, priced at a fraction of what it would cost somewhere else.
My advice: sit closer to the grill and focus on the quality of the products, the proper cooking and the attractive prices. The reward is a commendable casual meal for penny-pinching steak lovers.
The quality of the new dishes is in keeping with what’s served day in, day out at Vera’s Burger Shack. I think its richly flavourful and juicy burgers are among the very best in Ottawa. (Those burgers and sandwiches are still available at dinner time too, and throughout the day when Vera’s is open.)
Burger at the Butchery/Vera’s Burger Shack
Chicken filet sandwich at The Butchery
Take the 24-ounce rib steak dinner ($45), easily shared by two. The platter’s star was sizable and succulent, teeming with the savoury satisfaction of well-marbled beef. Cantor said that his steaks are Canada Prime (the highest grade), and he wet-ages them for between 25 and 35 days.
A rib steak platter at the Butchery
Meanwhile, the stubby fries with this dish and others were crisp outside and fluffy inside, and they retained their crispness throughout dinner. They could have been salted before they hit the table, but under-salted beats over-salted, and a met request for mayo on the side made seasoning questions moot.
Another notable customer-satisfaction point: our ball-capped server made sure that our table’s steaks were cooked medium rare as requested by having us cut into them and check their colour while he watched. I assume that an under-done or over-cooked steak would have been taken back for more grilling or replacement.
The Butchery also serves a 12-to-14-ounce striploin steak dinner ($29) and a boneless grilled half-chicken dinner ($17). But the better deal is to get the steak and chicken platter for two, which combines the two items for $39.
The striploin steak was fine, although intrinsically not as robustly flavoured and a bit more uniformly chewy than the most finely grained part of the rib steak. The chicken remained moist and tasty, although there was some serious charring (some might say say burning) from the grill, and the meat (some might say a bit under-seasoned, despite a lengthy marinade) benefitted from some garlic sauce on the side.
Chicken and Steak dinner for two at The Butchery
The smoked meat sandwich combo ($12) is a bit of an outlier on the menu. While it’s doesn’t have the artisanal or over-the-top feel of the best smoked meat sandwiches in Montreal, it wasn’t bad either.
Smoked meat sandwich at The Butchery
Two of my dining companions last week (we were five adults and two youngsters in our reservation, well-fed for about $110, HST in) were the pals that I call the Meat Brothers, because their travels regularly take them to steakhouses in New York, Las Vegas and elsewhere. One Meat Brother gave this concise, says-it-all review of the Butchery: “I would come back.”
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