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Lindy and Grundy

Where's the beef? It's at these Los Angeles meat shops, which will most certainly be bustling in preparation for this weekend.

We've outlined a few recommandations for what to get a several of the city's most respected butchers -- locally sourced, organic, all that good business -- but we also name-dropped a few off-the-path places you might not of tried yet.

As Homer Simpson once said, "All normal people love meat. If I went to a barbeque and there was no meat, I would say 'Yo Goober! Where's the meat?' I'm trying to impress people here, Lisa. You don't win friends with salad."

Just kidding vegan friends, we made enough gazpacho for everyone. Turn the page for 6 great Los Angeles butcher shops, listed alphabetically.

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Anne Fishbein

Chef Casey Lane tasting in the kitchen of The Tasting Kitchen

When we here at Squid Ink use the term "working ripe," it usually refers to those times when we head into the office after a particularly moist gym workout. But for Casey Lane, head chef at Venice's Tasting Kitchen (as well as the upcoming Parish and Itri), the term has another meaning altogether.

In a short promo video by the Culinary Agency, the group that documented Food GPS' Lamb Showdown with Zach Pollack, Steve Samson and Walter Manzke, and a Mark Peel-led tour of the Santa Monica farmers market, the former Portland chef explains the demands of nose-to-tail sourcing and utilizing hyper-seasonal ingredients while Kanye West's "Runaway" plays in the background.

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Anne Fishbein

Larry Silverton and Dario Cecchini

It was at the 30-year anniversary of Chez Panisse where Nancy Silverton first met Dario Cecchini. At the time, Silverton knew him only as the famed Dante-reciting butcher of Chianti, but since then an international culinary friendship has been forged. Every year when Silverton visits Italy, she makes the two-hour-plus drive on twisting country roads from her vacation home in Umbria to the tiny city of Panzano to eat at one of Cecchini's restaurants, Solo Ciccia and Officina della Bistecca. But before lunch, she always visits Antica Macelleria Cecchini, Dario's tiny butcher shop that swings like no other: There's loud music, complimentary snacks like herby, spreadable lardo and chunks of fennel-laced porchetta, and glasses of red wine that are constantly being refilled.

Recently, Cecchini, his American wife, Kim Wicks, and chef/author/Cecchini translator Faith Willinger were in Los Angeles as part of a U.S. mini-tour courtesy of Fontodi Wineries. In homage to Cecchini's easy hospitality (as well as a way for him to see his many L.A.-based friends and die-hard fans) Silverton threw him a backyard party.

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Dario Cecchini, with meat

If you have read Bill Buford's terrific book Heat, in which the New Yorker writer plays out his very creative midlife crisis at Mario Batali's pasta station at Babbo, you of course know all about Dario Cecchini, the most famous butcher in the world. You may know about Cecchini anyway, as well you should. Well, next week you may get the chance to meet him in real life.

Next Thursday, April 19, at Valentino in Santa Monica, Piero Selvaggio is hosting Cecchini for a butchery class, a lunch and a dinner. (Sadly, only the lunch is still available, at a cost of $50, with a portion benefiting Meyer Children Hospital in Florence.) The lunch, held at noon and prepared by Valentino executive chefs Luciano Pellegrini and Nico Chessa, will feature a menu of traditional pork dishes from Panzano in Chianti, Cecchini's hometown.

And then Friday, April 20, from 1-3 p.m. the famed butcher will be at Mozza's Scuola di Pizza in Hollywood for a beef butchery demo. Yes, it's $150, but it includes lunch. If you're interested, call Valentino and the Scuola (numbers below.) Brush up on your Italian, no?

Guzzle & Nosh

The sign at Harvey's Guss Meat Co.

The best meat art in Los Angeles isn't Lady Gaga's (by now) thoroughly rotted VMA dress, it's the mural adorning Harvey's Guss Meat Co. A gaggle of farm animals placidly stares out from a truck as it trundles toward the slaughterhouse. Anthropomorphized animals cheerfully exhorting you to eat them are always freaky.

You'd be forgiven for never noticing the place -- the entrance is in an alley behind a locked iron gate; open to the public only four days a week, it closes by noon. It would be a shame if you didn't pay attention to the image.

Founded by Abe Gussman in the late 1930s and now run by his son, Harvey, the butcher shop has been at its present locale since 1947. The hand-painted mural has been on the building for almost as long. No one makes signs like this anymore. At the corner of Olympic and San Vicente, look to the north, where a humble butcher's sign has transmogrified into a vintage work of art.

Our Best of L.A. issue is now out; this is one of over 400 pieces in this year's issue. Check it out.

G. Snyder

Pete's Hot Links

Phillip's BBQ, Woody's BBQ, Dr. Hogly Wogly's, Robin's Woodfire BBQ, and Spring Street Smokehouse; what do all these L.A. barbecue joints have in common? They all serve hot links imported from the same iron-gated takeout window just west of Crenshaw: a tiny, Cajun-style butcher shop that is probably one of the best kept BBQ secrets in the city.

Pete's Louisiana Style Hot Links is all but indistinguishable except for a sign over it's Jefferson Boulevard storefront that reads "Links Made Fresh Daily Since 1949." Step thorough an outer black metal grate and you'll find yourself looking into a sprawling stainless steel kitchen, which if you come early enough, will be filled a kind of raw energy that feels like a bizarre mix of Sweeney Todd and Willy Wonka. Tubs of brick red ground meat, seasoned with handfuls of what we can only imagine to be a well-kept Cajun secret, are squeezed into casings and twisted into long chains of plump little sausages. Arrive any later though, and the kitchen is entirely spotless, with no clue of the sacrificial morning ritual that occurred earlier.

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If summer burger boredom is setting in, might we suggest brushing up on your butchery skills with the new photo-heavy The Art of Beef Cutting? You know, because we could all stand to delve a bit deeper into our ribeye (technical name: longissimus dorsi) butchery technique.

Forewarning: This is not a "pretty" meat guidebook -- unless you happen to get your kicks from photos of "heavy white or opaque connective tissue from lean subprimals." In layman's terms, that annoying white silver skin skimming the meat's surface that is such a pain to cut off pot roasts and short ribs.

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Screenshot of Lindy & Grundy's Twitter page

Butcher's Guild Home Page

We have more food blogs, "foodie" Facebook pages and look-what-I'm-eating-now Twitter accounts than we could ever possibly read, assuming we wanted to. What could we be missing? Guilds.

The real, straightforward, 16th century baker-brewer-butcher kind. The sort of thing you really want to join, like the new online national Butcher's Guild that launched last month, but you can't. You know, because sometimes memberships go deeper than a click of a button. You have to be invited. Yeah, Lindy and Grundy are charter members. They go by their real names here: Amelia Posada and Erika Nakamura. Turn the page...

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Kevin Scanlon

Erika Nakamura and Amelia Posada

"I am six days away from becoming the mayor of this place," says Amelia Posada, "but I left my phone at home!" The co-owner of Lindy & Grundy Meats, the long-anticipated butcher shop on Fairfax, is seated next to her wife and business partner, Erika Nakamura, at Italian restaurant Terroni, across from the Grove. Posada is referring to her "mayor" status on Foursquare, the social network in which people "check in" to their location and compete for awards.

Her separation anxiety is understandable, considering that over the past eight months the pair have risen to the top of the foodie social network not for the keenness of their Kurobuta pork cuts but through the tenacity of their tweets, weaving their way into the social media tapestry.

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