Society Fair

In my constant hope to find a decent butcher in the metropolitan area, I trekked out to Alexandria to Cathal Armstrong's Society Fair after getting an email about if from CityEats. It's billed as Epicurean Emporium "Devoted to Food."

Another disappointment. It is a small, precious store that looks like a dollhouse version of a real market with a tiny bakery stand, a tiny butcher counter and a cheese display so lame you wonder why they bother. Cheese and meat both are packaged up in cellophane in such small portions they seem designed for a dieting single person. There was a fair selection of meat cuts in these miniature, package portions and we brought a couple home.

The biggest disappointment was that the premium product -- and premium prices -- were not matched by premium service. I had hoped this might finally be Washington's first beachhead in the new butcher movement because the website boasts that "we love to talk meat." The butcher who waited on us was not at all interested in talking meat with us. I had the impression we were an unwelcome interruption to his important work in the back cutting up teeny portions of tri-tip and sealing them in cellophane.

I was still hoping in spite of the unappealing nature of the store to establish a relationship in order to pre-order hard-to-find cuts for a Saturday morning pickup. This guy told us that tri-tip is too small to use for roasts (surely news to Molly Stevens, who devotes several pages to it in her roasting cookbook and to Andrea, who distinctly remembers tri-tip roasts in California) and that leg of lamb is preferable to lamb shoulder for stewing. Thanks, I can get all the leg of lamb I want at WF.

We're not buying much in the way of bakery goods these days, but we couldn't help but notice there was no bread at the bakery counter. Oh, we were told as were leaving at about 11, it will be coming out shortly. Lame, lame, lame.

Update: Regarding the meat we bought, mixed reviews. The Toulouse sausage, which we ate with pepper and onions, was quite nice, though the thin membrane burst during cooking. The pate de campagne was very good, too. The roast "beef," however, this Randall Lineback cut between veal and beef, had a funny off-taste, which may have been due to its being neither fish nor fowl, or to the skimpy bacon covering it, or to being wrapped without air in two layers of cellophane (for too long?). It was tender, but the taste was not good. Won't rush back.