grocery store not unlike Taylor’s, which
opened in 1961.
“The first time I went in there, I was
just amazed at all the meat, seeing all these
animals hanging,” Johnson says. “I would
raise all kinds of hell because I did not want
to go back to the fruit shed, I wanted to stay
in the butcher shop and watch.”
Hooked at an early age, Johnson grad-
uated from Oregon Meat Cutting school
in 1982. He accepted a part-time job as
a butcher at Taylor’s in 1983 and never
left, becoming a part owner in 1987, and
a full owner in 2007 along with his wife,
Kathy Johnson.
“There used to be places like this all
across the United States, little corner gro-
cery stores with a butcher in it,” he says.
“It’s a dying breed, but it’s also a thriving
breed, if that makes sense.”
In other words, Johnson has been old-
school for so long that he’s new-school
again, as a new interest in local and sus-
tainable food sources has pulled the spe-
cialty butcher shop out of a decades-long
decline. A 2008 UC Davis study helped
define the trend, finding that “consumer
demand for niche meats is often motivat-
ed by the belief that natural and organic
meats are fresher, have better nutritional
value, taste and long-term health benefits
than conventional meats, and that the
animals are healthier and better treated
than conventional livestock.”
Sacramento’s Farm-to-Fork logo
shows a plant growing into the shape of
a utensil, but the whole-animal butcher
helps provide the protein side of the sus-
tainable food equation.
HOOF TO SNOUT
Unlike Johnson, Eric Veldman Miller
never harbored any childhood dreams
of becoming a butcher. As a chef at
restaurants such as Mulvaney’s B&L in
Midtown Sacramento and an instructor
at Le Cordon Bleu in Natomas, Miller
was always searching for high-quality
and locally sourced meats. A visit to a
whole-animal butcher shop in Brooklyn
provided the necessary inspiration, and
in 2015 he opened V. Miller Meats, sourc-
ing all of his meat from within 100 miles
of the store.
“All our beef and lamb are grass-fed
[their entire lives], all our pork is raised
outside, all my lamb comes from Dix-
on, most of my pork comes from Chico,”
Miller says. “It’s a very clean and trace-
able source, a very safe way to eat.” Even
the hot dogs at V. Miller Meats are locally
sourced, since they are made from the
unused beef trim. If you buy a steak and a
hot dog at V. Miller, there’s a good chance
they come from the same animal, or at
least from the same ranch.
Those high standards come with
a cost, as the prices at V. Miller Meats
are significantly higher than at a local
butcher store like Roseville Meat Com-
pany, which sells grain-fed beef raised
on macro-farms in the Midwest. The
meat departments at larger stores like
Taylor’s and Corti Brothers also prac-
tice whole-animal butchery and source
much of their meat locally, but unlike the
purists at V. Miller Meats, they also offer
some pre-cut and boxed meats.
Miller’s main concern moving for-
ward is that there won’t be enough
slaughterhouses to meet the increasing
demand for organic meat, a discrepancy
that could affect his bottom line. Howev-
er, Miller takes comfort in his customer’s
Danny Johnson, left, practices for the 2018
World Butchers’ Challenge, held in Belfast.
The 2020 competition will take place in
Sacramento. PHOTO: CARRIE RICHARDS PHOTOGRAPHY
For more on the experience of the
Taylor’s Market butchers in the
2018 World Butchers’ Challenge,
visit www.comstocksmag.com.
August 2018 | comstocksmag.com
35