Abdullah ain't got nothing on this butcher. Photo courtesy Pine Street Market.
Located just a few blocks away from Academy Theatre, where Platinum Championship Wrestling competitors used to send each other to proverbial slaughter every Friday night, Pine Street Market is an old-fashioned butcher shop that prides itself on offering only the highest-quality artisan meats. And the butcher behind the bacon, bratwurst and beechwood-smoked speck is Rusty Bowers, a meat-cleaving madman who takes locally-farmed meat from Gum Creek Farms and turns it into the most delicious sausages, cider-brined pork chops and smoked pepper bacon you’re likely to ever taste. Having sponsored and supported events at the Plaza Theatre, Academy Theatre and Dad’s Garage Theatre‘s BaconFest, as well as entities such as the Atlanta Rollergirls and the Libertine, and artists like H.C. Warner and Dirk Hays, Pine Street Market definitely doesn’t mind feeding its fellow artistic types. Bowers, who has been known to take on a Leatherface-like persona from time to time, even donated a $100 box of meat to be raffled off at last month’s Monstrosity Championship Wrestling event, which ended up being a big hit with all the ghouls and creatures in attendance. As he prepares for the New Year, Bowers meets (or should I say “meats”) with Wrestling with Pop Culture to ham it up about meat, monsters and other merriment.
How did you end up opening your own butcher shop and why did you choose Avondale Estates as the locale?
I had been a chef for about 15 years working in Jacksonville, Fla., Maui, Austria and Upstate New York. I was always the butcher and picked up different tips along the way working in different restaurants. So this was always my passion. Then I met up with Farmer Tom at Gum Creek Farms out near Carrollton, Ga. with humanely-raised pigs that live outside and forage for food. I’d been friends with Bart Webb and Layne [Whitehead-Lee] at Sweet N’ Sinful bakery and always liked Avondale, so that’s how I wound up here with a big art community and lots of local support.
One thing that has been popular for Pine Street Market is the Meat of the Month Club, which is a great introduction even for people who don’t live nearby. Tell me a little more about that.
An assortment of artisan meats at Pine Street Market. Photo by Prime8Photo.
The Meat of the Month Club is an online meat CSA (community-supported agriculture). You can sign up for three, six or twelve months, with price breaks at six and twelve, and it ships out to you the middle of each month. It’s whatever exciting new stuff we’re working on. The most recent one was a five-pound holiday ham. You’ll always get a pound of bacon, it will feature lamb merguez sausage, smoked andouille, black truffle salamis, a recipe card with descriptions and all different new and exciting things each season. It’s $40 a month, including shipping, and it ships nationally.
Don’t you also offer something similar for local Pine Street shoppers?
We just launched our in-town meat CSA, which is the Meat of the Month Club times many, many more. You can come in the store and pick it up instead of having it delivered to your house, so it’s for the local Atlanta, Decatur and Avondale residents to come in. It’s $75 a month and includes all these wonderful fresh cuts like whiskey-brined ham steaks, pork shoulder roasts, different cuts of lamb like lamb porterhouses, a couple pounds of bacon, beef ribs and all sorts of fresh cuts that aren’t always in the deli case. I like to call it the “deeper cut” because it’s the stuff you can’t always find in the butcher shop. If you’re a Pine Street regular, you can get this package at the beginning of the month and put some in your freezer so you have a bunch of stuff to look forward to rather than just wander into the shop every week to see what we have.
For those who want to chop their own meat, you also offer Butcher Boot Camps and other classes. What can you tell me about those?
A closer look inside Pine Street Market. Photo by Prime8Photo.
In the Whole Hog Class you actually break down a whole hog. You season your own bacon, I cure it for you and you come back and pick it up two weeks later. There’s also a Sausage-Making Class where you decide your own flavorings for sausage and make a couple pounds of sausage that you then come pick up later. New for 2013 is the Butcher Boot Camp. If one class isn’t sufficient for your curiosity, it’s a series of three classes, three Saturdays in a row. The first one’s in January, the second one is at the end of February and into March. It’s a more in-depth class than the Whole Hog Class because you get to break down a pig and you also get to break down a lamb and you end up with more than $100 worth of meat to take home from the three classes. And you learn a lot more about the butchering process.
At last month’s MCW event, your box of meat was a huge success in the raffle. What will you be including in the box of meat to be raffled off at the next MCW event on Jan. 4?
The next one will definitely contain the bacon, some tasso ham, which is good for red beans and rice, some smoked andouille, a couple of fresh links, definitely some ground beef from Gum Creek Farms (they grind the entire cow, they don’t pull out the steaks) and an “I ♥ Bacon” Pine Street Market T-shirt.