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Here in Dallas, we like our meat. We also value where it comes from and who prepares it. So we are lucky to have a thriving community of expert butchers. Some are relatively new to the biz, and others have been doing it for decades. But all of them are passionate about their craft and the proteins they provide.
Deep Cuts Dallas
The first time Wendy Wolff ever saw her business partner, Nathan Abeyta, break down a carcass, she broke down in tears. “I literally started crying,” she says. “The artistry and technique and the passion were just so beautiful.”
Abeyta started processing animals as a kid, hunting with his father. After studying at Texas A&M-Commerce, he apprenticed with Gary Hirsch at Hirsch’s Meats. Later he went to work in the meat department at Whole Foods, where he met Wolff and Deena Chaboya-Ellis (left). The three started talking and decided to open a shop together in Far North Dallas in 2016.
“Being in the area, we knew there was a big void for a butcher shop, especially one that was forward-minded,” Abeyta says. He wanted to process most animals from snout to tail. “We make Slim Jim-style beef sticks with beef hearts. We want to be a no-waste shop. Anything can be turned into something, and the animal deserves that respect.” He has sold the jaws of fresh pigs to dental schools and the skin to tattoo artists, and he renders the fat for tallow grease.
Deep Cuts carries pork from Chubby Dog Farm, Four U Farms, and Windy Hill Farm; duck and chicken from D’Artagnan Foods; fresh elk and venison; and bread from La Spiga Bakery in Addison. All sausages are made in-house from whole-muscle pork shoulder and the shop’s own spice blends. Its two primary beef vendors are Texas-based: 44 Farms in Cameron and Flatonia’s HeartBrand Beef. Both ranches emphasize open grazing, with no antibiotics and genetic traceability of the stock.
“It really is the best,” Abeyta says. “Why buy out of state when there is so much good meat here?”
Sara’s Market & Bakery
What began as a pita bakery more than two decades ago has grown into a busy Mediterranean market with aisles of specialty goods, a flourishing produce section, and a certified zabiha halal butcher shop. The seven Bayan siblings, who once had summer jobs stocking shelves in the family-owned store and now run the show, insist on the high-quality standard they set: meat that is pasture-raised, vegetarian-fed, hormone-free, and mostly antibiotic-free.
“Being a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern store, there’s always been a demand for lamb,” Duaa Bayan says. You can order local lamb that comes in whole twice weekly, raw kibbeh (Lebanese tartare), and lamb casing-wrapped sausages. Butchers who expertly portion lamb shoulders and cut tender cubes for grilling will also advise about cooking and pairing. For first-timers: prepared kebabs, such as beef-lamb kefta patted around skewers, the meat flecked with parsley and freshly ground spices, or lamb chops that can be simply grilled with olive oil and salt and pepper.
The Bayans grew up with a mother, Khaloud Mirza, who wanted customers to feel they were coming into her home, and so you’ll find pistachio cookies right out of the oven and an aisle of tea, along with the essential trinity of fresh herbs, cucumbers, and feta. “Mediterraneans love barbecue,” Zaid Bayan says. “Grilled vegetables and, of course, the pita tie it all together.”
The Meat Shop
This light-filled, friendly spot opened in 2018 on a trendy stretch of Lovers Lane. In the sunny backyard, it has a casual party vibe with picnic tables and the smell of a smoker tickling the air.
Charles Jones had been a chef for two decades, with stints at Sachet and Stonebridge Country in McKinney, before he decided to take over as the shop’s butcher in 2021. The beef—sourced from the Hunt family’s Rosewood Ranch near—speaks for itself. You’re getting single-origin Wagyu, with its unparalleled marbling.
For the holidays, they have turkeys for Thanksgiving and tenderloins and rib roasts for Christmas. In the summer, you’ll find Charles smoking his own jerky. Daily sandwiches include house-smoked turkey, a kobe beef hot dog with tomato jam and pickled onions, and a brisket hoagie with pimento cheese and candied jalapeños. Prepared sides such as house-made chimichurri, Yankee and turkey chili, enchiladas, turkey pot pie, and scalloped potatoes are available to take home.
“It’s a little slower pace, I guess,” Jones says of his move from restaurants to butchery. “You can kind of get some more things done, but you still get to be creative. Plus, you do get to talk to a few people.”
Kuby’s Sausage House and European Market
Karl Kuby Jr. never intended to go into the family business. His father didn’t want him to; it’s a six-day-a-week job. Karl Sr. emigrated from Germany in 1956, but butchering has been the family business since 1728. Now that Karl Jr. has taken over the shop, Karl Sr. stops in on occasion to pass out gummy bears to the kids.
“The older I get, the more I realize what an impact this business has had on the community,” Karl Jr. says. “I’m seeing third, fourth, fifth generations of customers. Being here my whole life, I’ve seen customers come in and out. They treat me like family; I treat them like family.”
The shop is full of German imports, from pickles, tube mustard, and spaetzle to Karl Jr.’s cousin Dieter Probson, a Metzgermeister, or master butcher, from Trier, Germany. Beef is wet-aged until it is at least 24 days old, and chicken is delivered fresh daily. They make their own beef pastrami and will smoke just about anything: beef tenderloin, pork chops, baby back ribs, whole chickens. If you bring in your own fish, they will smoke it for you, too, and they’ll process your wild game at a separate 27,000-square-foot facility. “I tell everybody we’ve done alligator to zebra,” Karl Jr. says.
American Butchers
Calvin Wineland doesn’t do anything halfway. As an 18-year-old, when he wanted to become a blacksmith, he studied with legendary farrier Doc Butler. When he decided to become an Army helicopter pilot, he flew Chinooks and Black Hawks. And when he retired and decided to become a butcher, he created an unheard of model.
Once a week, or as needed, Calvin drives 11 hours to his home state of Nebraska where he and his wife, Desiree (a former Army helicopter commander), own a meat locker. They work with small ranchers from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, South Dakota, and Nebraska who bring in their animals, usually one at a time, for slaughter. Calvin then drives the carcass back to American Butchers’ stall at the Dallas Farmers Market, where it is dry-aged on the rail for at least 14 days before it is cut to customers’ specifications.
“From the moment the animal leaves the farmer’s hands, I never have my hands off it,” Calvin says. “We want to get back to where you know where your product comes from. We have the name of the rancher on the package, and I have their number on speed dial. I can call them up and you can ask them about how the animal was raised.”
Calvin has a state-of-the-art smoker to make his own jerky and beef sticks, hams, brisket, pulled pork, smoked lamb, and even smoked bones for stock. If you want to try a new cut, you can pick it out and the chef two stalls down at Beyond the Butchers, the Winelands’ other venture, will demonstrate for you how to cook it.
“I want to become your family butcher, to cultivate that relationship,” Calvin says. “I want you to come again and again.”
Pro tip: save money but get extra flavor with their lesser-known steak cuts. Also, their beef bratwurst is outstanding.
David’s Meat Market
Devon McDougall bought David’s Meat Market from his grandfather, David Harris. “It’s an amazing business,” McDougall says. “One family brought their babies in here and got them weighed on the scale. And now those kids are bringing their kids in and getting them weighed on the scale. It’s a neat thing to watch families grow up. And a lot of my customers have watched me grow up.”
McDougall carries choice and prime corn-fed beef from Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Ninety-five percent of the beef is Black Angus, because that’s what his other grandfather, Vaughn Rawlangs, raised. McDougall says that Rawlangs started the breeding program that led to the proliferation of Black Angus in Texas. “I watched our herd turn Red to Black when I was like 9, 10 years old,” McDougall says. “It was really cool.”
Pro tip: this is the place to stock up on boxes of frozen meats all year round.
Hirsch’s Meats
Step inside, and everything about Hirsch’s Meats signals a quintessential, old-fashioned butcher shop: the full horseshoe of glass-fronted cases, the old Coca-Cola sign, and the air of clean, skilled efficiency.
Gary Hirsch took a job as a meat market butcher in a family-owned grocery store at age 22 and fell in love with the trade. The meat market he opened in 1992 went from one employee to a knowledgeable staff that swells to 20 on weekends. He buys strictly for quality, drawing from six or seven suppliers for highest-level prime beef and Wagyu.
Take a ticket and wait to be served from the display of neatly arranged wares. There are separate mounds of ground chuck, round, and sirloin, plus bacon-laced sirloin on weekends. Bratwurst, Polish kielbasa, stuffed pork chops, and chicken wings are arranged in neat rows. You’ll also find frozen whole Cornish hen, duck, pheasant, rabbit, veal liver, and Frenched rack of lamb should you be so inclined. Wood chips and chunks for smoking are kept in tidy bins in the corner. They’ll also process your game.
With a jar of dill pickles crowning the deli counter and kids tugging at sleeves for Henry’s Homemade Ice Cream, you’ll almost be surprised that the men in ball caps at the checkout registers aren’t tallying your butcher paper-wrapped purchase by hand.
Pro tip: this is the best place to get fresh ham (raw and uncured) for Easter.
Rudolph’s Market & Sausage Factory
Opened in 1895 by Austrian-born Martin Rudolph, this shop later passed into the hands of Czechoslovakian Anton Pavelka, and then his nephew Cyrill “Sid” Pokladnik. Now Pokladnik’s grandson, Brandon Andreason, is in charge. Along the way, the passage of the torch down a line of European owners also meant a transmission of technical skills, as turn-of-the-century shop owners plied their craft.
What you find here are no-frills sausages—German, Italian, Czech, and Polish, fresh or smoked over hickory. The men behind the counter cleave mammoth slabs of flesh from a case that seems triple-deep with cuts. For ground beef, they custom-grind all-Texas beef in either all-chuck or a mix of short-rib, chuck, and brisket. The handsaws on the wall signal all the vestiges and dignity of their trade. On your way out, nod to the original sign, which has hung over the establishment since 1895.
Local Yocal Farm to Market
After he got married and his health-conscious wife went on The Maker’s diet, part of the Body by God regimen, Matt Hamilton started paying attention to the food he was eating. He decided the best way to get healthy meat was to raise his own.
Hamilton’s family still had a ranch in Coleman, Oklahoma, so he switched their cow-calf operation from pasture-finished to grass-fed beef. But he needed a new small-farming model to make it sustainable. “If I could become vertically integrated, if I became a little-bitty mirror image of the poultry industry, I could make a living for my family,” he says. And so, Genesis Beef was born, allowing Hamilton to bypass the various meat industry middlemen.
After outgrowing the McKinney Farmers Market, he opened Local Yocal Farm to Market just off the historic town square in 2010. “The grocery stores try to focus on the big three: rib-eyes, strip, filet,” Hamilton says. “We have 20 selections for you to choose from: bistro filet, petit strip, chuck-eye, McKinney steak. It’s not just all the same thing. It’s a meat adventure.”
Evan’s Meat Market
From the outside, Evan’s Meat Market looks like a boutique butcher shop. Step into the subway-tiled Highland Park store, and customers will find a neat display of tenderloins, chuck roasts, ribs, and filets. Farther down, there are mouthwatering cross sections of capicola, roast beef, and pastrami. Behind the counter, a wall of fridges is packed with to-go Cajun sides such as house-made gumbo and chicken salad and packages of frozen biscuits.
The proteins are sourced from Fort Worth Meat Packers and Box M Sustainable Meat Co., which are based in Texas and Oklahoma. Meagher imports the bread for the po’ boys from Langlinais Baking Company in Lafayette, which is where he spent a summer working his first job. Po’ boy French bread is slightly different, Meagher says, and Langlinais does it best: the bread is crispy on the outside but airy on the inside, which gives the sandwich its signature po’ boy “squish” when you cram the cold cuts, lettuce, tomato, and other toppings into one bite.
Behind the prime cuts and the personal touches are owner Evan Meagher, store manager Brer Wyant, and head butcher Mike Lawson, all of whom aim to put a friendly face on the neighborhood shop. “It used to be where you would know your butcher, they know your name, and you know where things are coming from,” Meagher says. “You’re not another number. That, to us, has a lot of meaning.”
The Bartonville Store Restaurant and Jeter’s Meat Shop
The iconic white clapboard Bartonville Store, in one form or another, has sat at the crossroads of Jeter and McMakin for more than 140 years. The Jeters, McMakins, and Bartons settled the area in the mid-1800s, banking on the promise of a natural spring and the fact that the land was situated at the halfway point between Denton and Grapevine, Justin and Lewisville.
After Tim House bought the historic building several years ago, chef Michael Scott asked him what his plan was. House said he was thinking it would make a good barbecue restaurant. Scott, who was the corporate executive chef and sales manager for the Hunt family’s wagyu beef business, suggested that he turn it into a high-end meat shop and steak restaurant.
“Tim and I worked on a business plan, and then it all just morphed into what it is now,” Scott says. “It’s just been really cool. You know, people come in this place and they think they’re gonna get a fried bologna sandwich, and out comes a $90 wagyu tomahawk on a plate with burning sage. That’s kind of how that went.”
Scott manages the product side of the new wagyu beef program for Rosewood Ranches. Their main product is F1 wagyu, a genetic blend of 50 percent wagyu and 50 percent Black Angus. Every Monday and Friday at 4 a.m., he grades the beef from the ranch’s 1,600 head of wagyu crosses, running 80 head a week through two locations in Itasca and Fort Worth and selling it all over the world.
At the Bartonville Store, just inside the main entrance, is Jeter’s Meat Shop, where Scott sells his wagyu steaks and brats. He also offers chef experiences, private dinners, sushi classes, and wine and tequila dinners. Harkening back to his time in Japan, he has Cobb grills from South Africa that mimic Japanese barbecue, and he’s built a hibachi table on the patio where he can do lobster fried rice and wagyu steaks.
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