Head To Hoof

Tom Mylan is looking for the perfect spot to plunge his knife. With half of a pig in front of him, he's prodding the carcass, looking for the right place to separate the rump from the rest of the animal with just one stroke. He leans his body in, the knife squeaks and off comes a ham the size of a barbarian's drumstick. Holding court at a kitchen store in Brooklyn, Mylan tells the audience gathered this evening that this is the kind of cut you would see in Italy, where the hindquarters are hung and sliced for prosciutto. Welcome to Pig Butchering 101, where for the next two hours Mylan will work his way through the meat map: trotters first, then a loin off the backbone, followed by the Boston butt and picnic butt (two ill-named cuts that come from the other end of the sow). At last he reaches the belly of the pig, and for the first time all night he uses the word "bacon." The demonstration ends with a table piled high with a pyramid of pork. (Article continued below...)

From the start, the head of the large sow has been kept separate, with its two vacant eyes staring out at an audience of hipsters who are here to find out how to break down the beast. The Brooklyn Kitchen began holding classes like this last year. These days the waitlist tops more than 60 people; the outfit is planning to hold classes in secret, on Monday nights, to meet the demand. Twelve people—eight men and four women—have crammed into the small space this winter evening, each having paid $75 to learn at the feet of the master. In fact, many received the course as a gift from their girlfriends; others ponied up the fee just to receive the six pounds of farm meat offered to attendees. And one came because he wanted very much to meet Mr. Mylan, who's something of a celebrity in foodie circles.

Over the past year, Mylan has become an unlikely herald of a new kind of meat morality. About eight years ago, the Slow Food movement migrated from Europe to America. As the organic-food sector grew in supermarkets at a clip of 8 to 9 percent each quarter, restaurants began focusing on farm-to-table freshness by planting off-site gardens and getting friendly with farmers. When it came time to buy meat, they learned, they'd save money if they bought the whole cow. And so the New Carnivore movement was born. The idea was hardly brand-new; Upton Sinclair wrote, in his 1906 classic "The Jungle," that the meatpacking industry should sell "everything but the squeal." But it soon began catching on at expensive restaurants like Brasa in Seattle, Cowbell in Toronto and Per Se in New York, where superb chefs have spent the past five years ordering entire animals from local farms to experiment with for their overindulged patrons. In London, Fergus Henderson has been running a veritable offal palace, St. John, since 1995; last month he was finally awarded his first Michelin star. "The Crispy Pig Tails at St. John are some of the most delicious things you will ever put in your mouth," writes TV chef Anthony Bourdain in the introduction to Henderson's "The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating," a cult cookbook that has made its way stateside, featuring recipes for Warm Pig's Head, Duck Hearts on Toast, and Roast Bone Marrow and Parsley Salad. Mylan himself abides by the philosophy that's best summed up in Henderson's book: "If you're going to kill an animal, then it seems only polite to use the whole thing." And that's how Mylan runs his new butcher shop, Marlow & Daughters, which itself opened last month to serve the needs of four Brooklyn restaurants.

Mylan, 32, spent most of his working years selling cheese before climbing aboard the New Carnivore bandwagon. He got a job helping a group of chefs in Brooklyn as they began delving into the Slow Food philosophy. They started with produce, but soon the restaurants were buying ground beef from a butcher shop in upstate New York. One day the owners got word that their distributors were opening a new location and didn't have the labor needed to break down the animals. "We got this friendly ultimatum," Mylan says. "And I happened to be walking by when they said, 'We need a butcher'."

The timing was fortuitous. Shops and farms were becoming burdened by individual requests from consumers and restaurants, all with different preferences. Before Mylan opened his store, there were only three shops in North America that butchered whole animals, which was a problem for the growing number of carnivores seeking farm-fresh local meat. Marlow & Daughters soon became the buzziest of butcher shops, spreading the gospel of head-to-tail eating. "We all need to be reminded of what meat eating entails," says Michael Pollan, the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." As a carnivore himself, he believes head-to-hoof meat is the ideal way to respect both human and animal life. And to justify this, he cites the disconnect between the unhealthy cuts we buy in supermarkets—anonymous plastic packages—and the animals we kill for that meat. In recent years, Americans have increasingly been given the option of knowing exactly where their food is coming from—and they're taking advantage of it. "If you're shopping at a butcher shop," Pollan tells NEWSWEEK, "you're forcibly reminded of what this transaction is about."