I’ve been hearing more and more buzz about the concept of ‘the whole cow’ as an ever growing number of young chefs attempt to revive the craft of butchery. The idea is beautiful in its simplicity, start with properly raised and fed animals and leave nothing to chance, by allowing your kitchen staff to break down chickens, pigs, cows and more; as needed for their dishes. Why have an up-charging, semi-skilled, meat-packing middle-man dictate your kitchen’s menu when there are talented chefs with sharpened knives standing at the wait?

The Times dining section recently highlighted a few of the more distinguished restaurants basing their kitchens on the butchery concept, most notably (for me) was Per Se. Creating some of the finest dining experiences in New York (the world for that matter), chef de cuisine Jonathan Benno “butchers his own pigs throughout the year, and spring lamb and venison in season, building degustation menus that proceed through various bits of anatomy… pork shanks are braised, pig tails are fried and pork trimmings turned into classic French charcuterie. The tricky part of whole-animal cooking, he pointed out, is finding an outlet for every part.”

I know a trend is growing in acceptance and interest when I see it begin to emerge in some of the aspiring, peripheral dining scenes; reading recently that the James Beard award-winning team behind some of Atlanta’s more respected restaurants have a planned opening in early 2009, ‘Abattoir’. Taking cues from its oh-so descriptive single word name, Abattoir will be centrally focused on “whole animal cuisine,” using locally raised and freshly butchered fowl, fish, beef, pork and game.

I’m personally a big fan of the ‘back to basics’ movements in the culinary world. The connection between ourselves and our food has, to some degree, been lost with the advancement of food science and prepackaged products. A refocus on the actual animals we eat is a strong reminder of mankind’s unbreakable connection to our earth. Chef Cosentino (of San Francisco’s Incanto) has driven home this point by taking “his staff to witness animal slaughters. After that, he said: ‘I don’t have mistakes anymore. They don’t burn meat. They don’t miscount. There are no screw-ups.”

Have a cow man…
-bryan