Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products such as bacon, ham, sausage, “lunch meat”, etc. It is also the kind of store that sells such a meat. In New York City, a number of small independent shops have opened up recently).
These shops have “brought the interactive aspect back to chopping—the mental and emotional stimulation that comes from customers coming into the shop and getting customized orders of food that fits their lifestyle,” said Charlie Mirisola.
On a recent Saturday at Smorgasburg, the waterfront food market that has become an epicenter of Brooklyn’s artisanal food movement, Scott Bridi, 36, was demonstrating his creativity at $5 a pop in front of a small crowd. His medium: a slider-size rye bun delicately stacked with spice-encrusted pastrami, which, as the founder of the five-employee, 2-year-old charcuterie firm Brooklyn Cured, Mr. Bridi prepared himself.
“The beauty is that we’re taking raw material—the parts of the meat that aren’t prime—and making it extremely desirable,” he said, ticking off some of his other products: duck, rabbit and chicken garlic sausage.
While Brooklyn Cured was one of the few stalls trumpeting handmade sausages at Smorgasburg, roughly 60 of the 100 stands sold some variation of locally sourced meats. The entrepreneurs, most under 40 years old, represent a rising subset of New York City’s well-known artisanal meat industry, which took off a few years ago when independent butcheries like Marlow & Daughters and Dickson’s Farmstand Meats set up shop in Williamsburg and Chelsea, respectively.