The Meat Department

Open the door to The Meat Department and you’ll be hit by a blast of The Beastie Boys. The walls are plastered with film posters of a certain boyish ilk — A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, Rocky. If it weren’t for the thick rib-eye steaks and plump Toulouse sausages lined up in The Meat Department’s cases, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had walked into Zach Davidson’s bachelor pad. But in a way you have. His tastes and persona litter his Danforth shop, and as he says, “We like to be a bit of a rock n’ roll butcher shop.”

East of Broadview in affluent Riverdale, The Meat Department successfully fills a traditional need as well. “We try to be an old-fashioned butcher shop,” says Zach. “Everything’s cleaned and trimmed in house. Everything’s tied properly. Everything cooks well. That’s the skill that you’re paying for.” But it does so in an original and arresting manner.