We find out about Lindy & Grundy in the book “Delicate: New Food Culture” edited by Gestalten and immediatley attract us the attention the cool pictures of the couple inside their beautiful butcher shop in LA. Erika “Grundy” Nakamura and Amelia “Lindy” Posada are readying their knives and cleavers to butcher the finest sustainable California meats. After studying the art of butchering at Fleisher’s Grass-Fed and Organic Meats in upstate New York, the married couple head west.
Making appearances at Artisanal L.A. to butcher a pig and teaming up with Chicks with Knives to break down a whole lamb at Surfas, Nakamura and Posada quickly made a name for themselves among the L.A. food community and decided to establish their own butcher shop. As a gay married couple they struggle through prejudice, judgment, and strict government regulations just so locals can enjoy quality traceable meats.
The sell locally-sourced charcuterie including Rancho San Julian beef, Reride Ranch pork, Sonoma Direct lamb and Rainbow Ranch Farms chicken. They carry only pastured meats raised on small, local, sustainable farms, and they practice a true nose-to-tail butchering. There are no hormones in the meats they sell and all are sourced within a 150 miles of their LA shop, so that money goes back to supporting local economies and communities.
The only difference with Lindy & Grundy and your quintessential old-fashioned butcher? It’s run by two young women who look more like hipsters you’d find walking down a block in Williamsburg than butchering dynamos who are at the top of the boutique butcher-shop trend. The shop, which Erika describes as an “old-school industrial French butcher shop,” has a rail system, for hanging and moving whole animals, designed by Amelia’s cousin, an ironworker in New York.
But dynamos they are and their sustainable philosophy and high-quality organic selection is garnering heaps of attention in its own right.What makes Lindy & Grundy sustainable? “All of our meats are coming from within 150 miles of Los Angeles, except our lamb which is raised in Northern California, in Santa Rosa. We don’t have to use trucking companies from all over the country – we keep our business as local as possible. Once our animals arrive to the shop, we utilize the entire carcass.
We take the bones and make beef, pork, lamb and chicken stock to sell. We make soups, chili, pate, rillettes, even dog food! We minimize waste by respecting the animal and using the whole thing. We feel that supporting local business and agriculture is incredibly sustainable for our community.
All of our animals are 100% raised organically- meaning they are never treated with hormones or antibiotics, and the grasses on which they graze are never treated with pesticides. Our farmers are VERY small, and are not “ certified organic”-as most of them simply cannot afford to pay for that USDA certification labeling, like so many small farms in this country”.
Erika and Amelia have very close relationships with all of their farmers, and make frequent trips to the farms to check up on the animals that are being raised for Lindy & Grundy. Every Wednesday, Amelia aka Lindy, picks up 60 dozen eggs from Schaner Farms, at the Santa Monica Farmers Market. For more information just follo the link bellow.