Window into farm-to-table food: Redwood City butcher shop Gambrel and Co. provides sustainable choices

“Anyone can sell a 40-day aged rack and rib-eye,” he said. “Who can sell lamb riblets, or lamb shanks and still make people super, super excited and happy with what they make?”

The former chef’s interest in the world of butchery meshes well with the approach he uses in preparing cuts of meat, which takes the whole animal into account. Every week, the store receives large portions of an animal, such as a half pig or a whole lamb, which Robert and his two other staff members break down over the course of the week so every part is used.

“We might not have exactly what you need, all the time,” he said. “That’s not to say, we can’t get you everything. We can have it there tomorrow, but I’m not going to keep it back there and throw it away.”

The strategy not only ensures customers are getting the freshest cuts of meat, but it also allows Robert to build a sustainable model for reducing waste. He said the meat industry is defined by a focus on getting the most expensive and popular cuts of meat on the shelves of grocery stores and discarding cheaper and lesser known cuts.

“If we’re going to take lives of animals, let’s eat the whole thing,” he said.

Whereas some major grocery stores can fill a 50-gallon bin with animal refuse once a day, Robert’s store fills one 50-gallon bin a month. With some of the cheaper cuts, Robert makes sausages and pates, which he showcases alongside cuts available that day in the front display of the small space, marked by wood tones and older iron butchery instruments.

It’s an approach he hopes will catch on with his customers, many of whom have found his lesser known cuts and sausages to be the reason they come back time and again.

Redwood City resident Sally Albert said she comes to the store once a week. She learned about Gambrel and Co. from a friend, and felt immediately at ease in the rustic store, lined along the edges with sauces, cheese and bread.

“It reminded me of being in Bologna,” she said.

Albert said she appreciates Robert’s creativity in offering meat she hasn’t experienced before, and that the sausages she buys at Gambrel and Co. are unlike any she has found at local grocery stores.

For Robert, this feeling is exactly what he hopes customers will experience when they walk into his store. The 33-year-old has his fair share of experience with Italian cuisine, having worked in a San Francisco restaurant specializing in northern Italian dishes as a sous chef and later executive chef. In 2012, when the restaurant closed, he bought a one-way ticket to Italy and worked at a restaurant that also owned a small butchery. He took a similar trip to Spain a year later, and expanded his appreciation for small shops bringing chefs one step closer to their ingredients.

As a Vermont native, the small shops he saw and experienced in Europe reminded him of home, where major grocery stores are largely absent.

“These little shops are near and dear to my heart,” he said.

Robert started cooking when he was 14, rolling dough and washing dishes for a local pizza restaurant. As a college student at the University of Vermont, he worked as a sous chef and later executive chef for a restaurant in Burlington. Through his studies in botany, Robert visited local farms to learn about how they grew vegetables and took care of their livestock, experiences he soon connected with his work at the restaurant.

“I was having this hand in hand conversations with farmers, and I realized how much better that was,” he said.

Though Robert has directly experienced the impact of stronger connections between prepared food and where it comes from, he realizes that not everyone has had the same window into food sustainability that he has. Knowing this, he is motivated him to bring cooks at all levels into a more sustainable approach to consuming food.

“I have felt like the steward of this,” he said. “It was always in me to share the farm-to-table aspect.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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