Visiting Dario Cecchini's Slaughterhouse
"After my experience as a butcher, this was another step in my journey of understanding animal-based food in all its different aspects, especially as a person who chooses to eat meat".
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Ciao from Florence.
I just got back from a visit to Spain with my step-father Dario Cecchini, world-famous butcher based in the hilltop town of Panzano in Chianti, featured, amongst others, on Netflix’s popular culinary documentary series Chef’s Table (Season 6).
Dario has been sourcing his meat in Northern Spain from the same family-run slaughterhouse and the same family-run farm nearby for over 30 years, it’s literally the meat that made him famous, and you can see the both on his Chef’s Table episode.
I posted about this trip in my stories on Instagram (follow here) and obviously people had questions! So here are more details.
We arrived at the facility at 6am to select this week’s sides of beef before they were loaded onto the temperature-controlled truck and driven to Panzano. The meat is usually selected by someone for Dario based on Dario’s preferences and requirements, but every once in a while he goes and checks up on things himself.
I saw the skinning, the guts being taken out and sorted, how they split the animals in half, and the deboning process which is pretty similar to what I learned to do in Panzano, during my time working there as a butcher.
We traveled from Tuscany with Orlando, Dario’s 85-years-young head-butcher, from whom we both learned how to debone meat. One of the most interesting parts was seeing the two of them go through the various sides of beef, selecting the ones for Panzano, and discussing each one’s characteristics, such as shape and fat distribution. Combined, they have over 120 years of experience as butchers and, I swear, they could see details that were completely invisible to my relatively untrained eye. Watching them approach two parallel sides of beef and immediately and simultaneously say “yes” or “no” was shocking.
After my experience as a butcher, this was another step in my journey of understanding food, specifically animal-based food, in all its different aspects, especially as a person who chooses to eat meat, and who was raised with the fundamental concept of using every little last bit, as a no-waste philosophy but also as a form of respect towards the animal’s sacrifice.
Side note: I feel a sort of guilt due to the fact that I eat meat, but I’ve never taken the responsibility of actually taking the animal’s life myself. In the past, this experience used to be more common and I wonder if it’s helpful in truly appreciating meat, and avoiding the unnecessary overconsumption of low-quality meat products, produced with mass-industry practices that are harmful for all.
One day, I’d like to go hunting (for sustenance, not for sport).