Edible Food Find: The Modern Butcher Shop

Like perhaps a lot of millennial culinary entrepreneurs, it was Anthony Bourdain who inspired Warren Means to become a whole-animal butcher.

In a 2012 episode of “No Reservations,” the late, great documentarian visits Maison Picard Traiteur, a boucherie et charcuterie in the French city of Auxerre, Burgundy. While watching, Means—an avid home cook—noticed the pride the butcher had for every animal that entered the shop. Means already had the knife skills (more on that later), and he thought, "I want to do that someday." In 2016, he started dating his now-fiancée Lisa Nichols. He mentioned the episode to her (she was already a Bourdain fan), and he told her about his ambition.

“If you tell me you want to do something,” Nichols says, “I will always be your biggest cheerleader.” A career bartender, she had occasionally dreamed about opening her own place, but was becoming disillusioned by working in restaurants, she says. So when her partner mentioned his hidden desire to open his own business, “I’m, like, let’s do it!” The couple started by seeking advice from the relatively few whole-animal butchers in the region, and soon landed apprenticeships with Sutter Meats in Northampton.

They opened The Modern Butcher Shop on February 2, 2019, in Newburyport, the first whole-animal butcher shop on the North Shore. In the spring of 2023, Means and Nichols plan to move their award-winning meat shop to a storefront double the size—and more than 20 miles closer to Boston—in downtown Danvers. The new location also adds a 13-seat sandwich counter and charcuterie bar, with an all-new lunch menu and a curated list of craft beers and wines by the glass.

In Danvers, The Modern Butcher’s popular demonstration classes will continue, where Means and Nichols generously share their knowledge in a laid-back yet authoritative way. And just like Bourdain, they are no doubt inspiring potential future whole-animal butchers. How am I so sure? After a Beef 101 class I checked out in Newburyport with Edible Boston and Edible Worcester Publisher Sarah Blackburn, I overheard a fellow attendee ask Means and Nichols if he could become their apprentice. (They told him to follow up after the new shop opened, so if you’re reading this, kid, get after it!)

Education is paramount at The Modern Butcher Shop. There are comparatively few whole-animal outlets in Massachusetts—they include Sutter, Somerville’s M.F. Dulock, Walden Local, Formaggio Kitchen, Savenor’s and First City Meats in Lynn, which opened in December 2022—because their products are not always an easy sell, Nichols says. Consumers certainly love a Porterhouse steak and filet mignon, but what about a lesser-known ranch steak or a chuck flank?

There are only two of each cut on every animal, with some exceptions, Means explains. The Modern Butcher typically processes one or two whole cows, two pigs and at least 50 chickens on-site each week. If a shopper comes in for something that’s sold out, Means and Nichols will ask questions about the planned recipe in order to suggest an in-stock substitute. It took some time to earn customers’ trust, but now, “I have [a buyer] for every single cut on this animal,” Means says.

About 65% of the animal is a sellable piece of meat, Nichols says. The rest is fat and bone, but nothing goes to waste at The Modern Butcher Shop. While Means is butchering, he has two bins beneath his table into which he tosses scraps for grinding and fat for rendering. Bones are reserved to make stock, which is for sale from the shop by the quart. TMB also makes a dog food supplement using meat that has started to oxidize.

Beef fat, or tallow, has myriad uses, including in the process of dry-aging steaks, and in making soaps and candles, which a TMB employee does on days when the shop is not doing food production. She makes an edible garlic-infused tallow candle that melts when lit to become a dip for bread. The lunch menu at the Danvers location showcases their mission as a whole-animal butcher shop. A selection of charcuterie, such as whipped lardo and house-made terrines, makes use of ground meat and fats. Along with The Modern Butcher’s signature Sandwich of the Day special—a behemoth handheld in rotating flavor combinations like spicy-honey-dipped oven-“fried” boneless chicken thigh with a saucy slaw; inch-tall layers of house-made mortadella with roasted red peppers and fresh mozzarella; and an exquisite example of the North Shore’s famous roast beef three-way (only available on Saturdays)—there is a lineup of about a half-dozen sandwiches smaller in size, which will also change regularly depending on what charcuterie the kitchen is making.

Nichols, who has more than 33,000 followers on her craft-beer-focused Instagram @porkandpintsboston, is delighted to finally have her own beverage program to command. “Over the years, we’ve [developed] good relationships with craft brewers, so we’ll be able to have special bottles and cans,” she says, like cellar selections from Allagash and Trillium. The wine list will feature natural selections, and specifically dry-farmed wines, which are grown without irrigation. “It stays true to our mission,” Nichols says.

A few years into their butchering endeavor, Means and Nichols are amazed—and, Means will admit, a little scared—at how fast The Modern Butcher has grown. When the idea first took hold, Means was a pathologist assistant at Boston Medical Center, wielding the tiny blade of a scalpel to perform autopsies and more. “The knife skills, anatomy—everything was built in. I learned so fast” during his apprenticeship with Sutter Meats, he says. With the Modern Butcher’s next step to a larger and busier butcher shop, he just goes back to advice he received in those early days from other whole-animal butchers. “The only way to really learn how to run a butcher shop,” he says, “is to just do it.”

36 Maple St., Danvers
themodernbutchershop.com
@themodernbutchershop

This story appeared in the Spring 2023 issue, when Modern Butcher Shop was in transition between the original location in Newburyport and their new store in Danvers.