King of Meat

High end meat is a craze. This sounds like an obvious statement, since when have people ever not liked good meat? But look at the popularity of places like Shake Shack, Good Burger, and the Spotted Pig and you can see that more an more New Yorkers are caring about the quality of their meet. High end burgers alone have created their own micro craze within the wider meat craze, driven partially by the success of places like Shake Shack, and partially by the availability of high end meat for relatively cheap prices. These two things (at least in New York) are largely a product of one wholesale meat company, LaFrieda Wholesale Meat Purveyors. Owned by brothers Pat and Mark, LaFrieda supplies, to name only a few, Shake Shack, Union Square Cafe, The Spotted Pig, Bluesmoke, and Five Napkin Burger. As described in their recent NY mag write up the brothers cornered the market by understanding the base desire of all high end restaurants, to give the customer something they can't get anywhere else. In line with this understanding is the LaFrieda's practice of giving each restaurant a specialized blend. So while the meat going to shake shack and the spotted pig comes from the same cows, and is made in the same machines, the differing rations of chuck, skirt steak, and rib create unique ground beef for each restaurant. As much credit as we give to chefs like Danny Meyers for bringing the burger into the limelight, these two have been quietly building up the burger from behind the scenes by throwing better and better meats into the grinder. The newest blend from the LaFrieda's in the Black Label Buger, which is made of ground dry aged rib eye. Grinding up this cut is the food equivalent of melting down a Ferrari because you need steel, at least to the traditional chef. But LaFrieda's willingness to experiment with blends could just be what is driving the latest New York food fad. If you look at LaFrieda's client list almost every restaurant is new, Pat LaFrieda even snubbed the old guard Peter Lugar's due to work ethic issues. It's not too far fetched to say that these brothers are the driving force behind the patties at most of New York new and notable restaurants.