Beeside Balcony – farm raised on the beach in Del Mar

If you ever find yourself in Del Mar, CA and looking for a place for dinner or lunch you should try Beeside Balcony.  The restaurant is quite small  and the menu may be limited for some but the two times I have been here have been a fantastic experience.

From their website:

“Beeside Balcony is a hidden gem in old Del Mar, CA with a relaxed seaside chic décor where guests enjoy ocean views from the covered outside balcony. During cooler weather, Beeside’s got you covered with amazing patio heaters and an intimate inside dining room. The menu is chef-driven with every dish made to order and features New American flavors with a unique fusion of Mediterranean and California cuisine. To compliment the menu, we feature a thoughtfully designed wine list and craft beers from predominantly locally producers.

Our guests tell us that “every dish that comes out of the kitchen is a culinary delight.” Chef Costa sources produce from local farms, and features organic free-range lamb, sushi-grade salmon, prime steak, and imported cheese, salumi and olives.”

Let’s look at the menu more closely for the responsibly sourced options.  On the lunch menu there is mention of all-natural chicken (salad, skewered chicken plate), grass-fed lamb (burger), free range lamb (lamb gyro, sounds delicious will have to get next time) and  Scottish salmon (salad or skewers).  The dinner also has the burger and gyro, Scottish salmon (pan seared plate) and Mary’s “Fried” chicken.  Let’s dig a little deeper here.

Mary’s “fried” chicken

I have had the pleasure of having the Mary’s “Fried” chicken, the chicken is firstly cooked sous vide for 1.5 hours, dusted in rice flour, then lightly fried, it’s absolutely delicious.  The chicken brand Mary’s is well known as being one of the most transparent free-range poultry producers in the world. The chickens are raised in California and they follow the 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating Standards Program with Global Animal Partnership.   For more information in this program check out this link.  The program is based on 5 ranking each of which has certain standards for how the animals are raised and what they are fed.  Basically the closer you can get to being completely pasture raised and fed a natural diet then the higher the rating with the highest rating being Step 5.  The Mary’s chicken website actually has a good description of the standards required for each step for chickens here.  No mention of whether all the all-natural chicken dishes are all from Mary’s though.

Let’s take a look at the Scottish salmon.  Firstly, from what I can determine Scottish salmon is farmed and they don’t catch wild salmon off UK waters.  Got to say that there are some mixed reviews about the sustainability of Scottish salmon these days.  Wild Scottish salmon was once a prized dish but due to low population from over fishing this practice is no longer allowed.  This article here outlines some of the problems

For the lamb, the majority of domestic lamb sold in the US is grass-fed, some may be grain finished at the end. Australian and New Zealand lamb is grass-fed it whole life and almost always free-range.  No mention on the Beeside online menu of the lamb origin but they seem confident enough to state free-range and grass-fed. One time I ate there I had the lambs chops, the waiter told me they were from Australia.

Australian lamb chops

Beeside Balcony is a lovely place located in Del Mar.  Great transparency on the menu and the food is amazing!

BBQ pioneer in Boston – Sweet Cheeks Q

One of America’s culinary gifts to the world is BBQ.  Before I came to the US I had no idea how many styles, flavors and techniques there were that make up this delicious, smoky genre.  Traditionally BBQ was used to make less flavorful, cheap cuts of meat more tasty by cooking slow over a smoky fire.  Note the phrase ‘cheap cuts of meat’ – hence it is hard to find BBQ made from grass fed beef, free range chicken or heritage pork.  I love BBQ and have even started smoking and experimenting with different meats myself.  However smoking a pork butt or beef brisket is a long involved process that can take all day and a lot of prep and cleaning up.  Therefore I limit this exercise to 2-3 times per year.  During the other times of the year I needed to find a place to satisfy my BBQ cravings that was in line with my new meat philosophy.  Sweet Cheeks saved me….

This excerpt from their website was music to my ears:

“Doing it right: For us, it’s using the best of everything possible. All of our meats are responsibly sourced and all natural. Most of our beef is “Never Ever”, meaning it’s all sustainably-raised “Super Natural,” premium Black Angus beef that is NEVER EVER treated with hormones, antibiotics, or chemical additives. Other beef options are from small New England farms adhering to similar practices. Our pork is Berkshire, our chicken and turkey are all natural. We use local farms when possible. We’re committed to doing what’s right.”

I was lucky that I found Sweet Cheeks quite quickly during my search for BBQ constructed from responsibly sourced meat.  I haven’t found another BBQ restaurant in Boston that adheres to the same meat standards.  If I was to be real strict on the Meat Philosophy rules then I would need to ensure the the animals are being treated humanely and free-range, the beef needs to be grass-fed not corn-fed.  But the phrase above from their website is very comfortably and checks a lot of boxes.

I have been to Sweet Cheeks four times now and the BBQ is absolutely delicious – I have tried most the meats and they are all delicious.  The menus has plenty of hints to the meat sourcing philosophy – all natural chicken, heritage-breed pulled pork, all-natural pork belly and the phrase above should confirm your confidence to go all out here.  You order a ‘tray’ which usually consists of one meat and 2 sides – one hot and cold.  I suggest to go for the Fat Tray where you get 3 meats and 2 scoops (sides) – try them all and go back for your favorite!

Sweet Cheeks has been a savior for me – amazing BBQ concocted from responsibly sourced meat right here in Boston.  My search for others continues, haven’t found any others yet….

 

 

 

 

 

Search for grass-fed beef – BRED gourmet

Recently I wrote a post about the definition of grass-fed beef.  Now that we are (sort-of) clear on the definitions, where can we find grass-fed beef at a restaurant?  Well you won’t have to look too hard to find the term grass-fed on a menu.   Very few restaurants state the actual farm they get their meat from (there are some exceptions, stay tuned for future posts) but there are plenty of restaurants that will state grass-fed beef on their menu, particularly for burgers.  So how can can you know for sure?

One day I was home with the kids (school holiday) and we went bowling in the morning to kill some time and get them out of the house on rainy day.  I was looking for a place to take them to lunch and I found – Bred Gourmet, a burger place in Lower Mills Dorchester, close to my house.   They had “grass-fed beef”  all over their menu and good reviews on Yelp, and a kids menu!  We were there at lunchtime and it was not that busy.  They had a small eat-in area and the menu looked interesting –  three grass-fed burger options, a hormone-free turkey burger, bison burger, salmon burger and a veggie option and you can also add a free-range egg.  Lots of the right terms being used here for sure.  I decided to go for the Maui burger, the combination of grilled pineapple,  plantains and BBQ sauce was intriguing to me, but I decided to omit the ham.  Kids got a plain cheeseburger.  Everything was made to order and while I was waiting I asked the young lady behind the counter, where did they get their grass-fed beef?  She replied that she couldn’t tell me, I said ‘can you not tell me or do you not know?’  Turns out she didn’t  know – fair enough.

The burgers were delicious, you could taste the quality for sure.  I wish that I got a plain cheeseburger after tasting my kids’ burgers so that I could really appreciate the taste of the beef.  The flavors of the Maui burger were awesome but I have found with good grass fed beef you don’t need too many other flavors.  The real taste test was the kids, I asked whether the liked BRED burger or Wendy’s and they overwhelmingly said Bred – must say I was a little surprised since they loved Wendy’s (which is now off the list by the way).

When I got home I did some research on BRED – there is a good video on Youtube with a review by Phantom Gourmet.  They show most of the menu and they look so good! In this video they mention that the meat is from Maine Family Farms.  A search came up with a website that mentioned that they buy grass-fed beef from farms throughout Maine.  I emailed them to ask if all their beef is pasture-raised and grass fed and got a prompt reply that is was.  I also emailed BRED gourmet to ask if they still use Maine Family Farms for their ground beef since the video was a few years old (still waiting for a reply).

Also found this article on the founder Tambo Burrow.   I like that he is a young guy from the neighborhood that is trying to make a difference making good food.

Why eat grass-fed beef?

Cows aren’t meant to eat grain and corn – they have evolved to eat grass.  Seems logical right?  Then why is it so hard to find true grass-fed beef?  Factory Farm cows are fed a complex mixture of ingredients that are far away from a cows natural diet of grass.  I won’t go into the whole story of what goes into this feed but here is a link if you want to know more.  What I will say is that in order for factory farms to trick a cows digestive system to eat a diet based on grains they need to be pumped up with drugs and you can imagine what that does to their digestive systems and overall health.  I used to get serious heartburn from drinking coffee (I used to drink 5-6 cups a day) and one day I asked my doctor what I could do to stop the heartburn.  He said, ‘I am not going to prescribe a pill to stop your heartburn, if you want to stop your heartburn stop drinking coffee’. Good point.  So I stopped drinking coffee and haven’t had a cup since.  If I would have taken Zantac to keep drinking coffee my stomach would have been ruined.  This is what is happening to factory farm cows we are giving them drugs to enable them to consume foods that are making them sick so they can produce meat and milk.  Why would we want to eat sick cows?

So it seems that it would be preferable to eat a cow that was fed its natural diet – cows don’t only eat grass they eat a mixture of vegetation here is a link that explains.  How do we find beef from such cows?  Not as easy as you may think. It should be noted that all cows begin their lives in more or less the same way – they all start out living on a farm, pasture-raised, as natural as can be.  It’s what happens at around 3-4 months that makes the difference.  Factory farm cows gradually get switched to a grain based diet in order to put on as much weight as quickly as possible.  A number of other possibilities exist for the grass-fed cow.  Firstly, they can be grass-fed but still on a feedlot in cramped conditions similar to a factory farm cow.  Diet is much better but living conditions are not.  This leads to another commonly used term, pasture-raised.  All cows begin their lives pasture-raised.  Factory farm cows are then shipped to these farms and gradually transitioned to a grain diet.  Also cows can be grass-fed, pasture-raised but grain finished – for the last 2-3 months of their lives they ate grain to fatten them up.  It is also very difficult for cows in colder climates (eg. New England) to have a 100% pasture-raised, grass-fed diet, they often need some grain supplement – which leads to another term – organic-grain or non-GMO grain diet.  Confused yet?

This week is Factory Farms detox week

Factory Farm: (n) An industrial facility on which large numbers of animals are confined in unnatural conditions that prioritize production of meat, eggs or dairy at the expense of animals’ welfare, the environment, workers, consumers, communities and farmers.

Check out this link

Meet the farmer – DaSilva Farm

Previously I had written about my experience with a couple of mail order meat services: Walden Meat Co and Crowd Cow.  Both good experiences, customer service was excellent, meat tastes great but the extra charge for shipping makes it even more expensive.  I also thought that the good done supporting a small farm was slightly offset by the wasted resources taken by shipping chicken breasts from Alabama to Massachusetts.

This then lead me to look for local farms in the Massachusetts or New Hampshire area where I could purchase from directly, saving money on shipping and saving the environment by not putting meat on plane.  I quickly found that there are a lot of farms in the area that practice sustainable farming for all types of meat and eggs.  Many are within a couple of hours drive from my house as well.  Even better was that I found that there are some of these farms at some of the local farmers markets close to where I live.

One of the farms that I found was DaSilva Farm located in Portsmouth, Rhode Island – 60 miles from where I live.  Their website states that they pasture-raise their poultry and pigs, chemical and antibiotic free.  Even better they have a stand at the Braintree Farmers market every Saturday – only 5 miles from where I live! Checks all the boxes for feel good meat – responsibly raised, local small family farm that doesn’t have to be shipped – there is also a cute photo of the farmer and his family– how can you not support them!  So one September Saturday morning I took my oldest son to the Braintree Farmers market as we were on our way to soccer.

Sure enough manning the DaSilva stand himself was the farmer Joshua DaSilva (I recognized him from the photos from his website).  He mentioned that he was short on produce right now but would be completely re-stocked in 3 weeks – so I bought a pack of maple pork breakfast sausages, a 4lb pack of bone in pork chops and some ground beef.  I packed them in the cooler I brought (everything was frozen) and went to soccer feeling pretty good that I supported that nice family farm.

When I got home I couldn’t wait to try some of the DaSilva farm meat that I bought.  Something I noticed was that the meat was processed at Northeast Kingdom Processing from St Johnsbury, Vermont.  Not unusual that a small farm wouldn’t process their own meat but it should be noted that this meat did travel from Rhode Island to Vermont and back to Rhode Island (500 miles).  Definitely not the same magnitude as factory farm meat which can me shipped from the midwest or even Australia.  I also noticed from the website that they didn’t mention that they raised cows (only poultry and pigs) but they sold ground beef – makes me wonder did they raise these cows themselves?

 

 

Walden Meat Company -responsible meat delivered!

Where to start in my search for sustainable meat?  Google of course!  One of the first places that pops up was a site called Walden Meat Co. (https://waldenlocalmeat.com/).  I am guessing this came up as a top search since I live in the Boston area and this company is marketed towards local farms in New England and New York and they are based in the Boston area.  They even have a butcher shop in the South End neighborhood of Boston.

The website does a great job explaining their standards which tick all the boxes:  “grass-fed and finished”, “raised outdoors on herbicide and pesticide-free pasture”, “never received antibiotics or hormones”, “humanely handled without the use of electric prods”.  There are a lot of options to choose from ranging from just ground meat to picking what meat and cuts you want (to some degree will explain later).

The Just Grind, Basics and Complete Options they pick what you get as described.  The Custom option you have a lot more control over what you get.  I went for the custom option.  Based on their recommendation for our family (I only counted 4 people since our 3 kids don’t eat a full serving) they recommended  20-21 lbs per month which are about to 10 meals (according to the website).  Around 2 lbs per meal sounds right. For the custom option, you need to make selections from each of the following: Base Cuts (pick at least 2), Middle Cuts (pick at least 5) and End-Cuts (pick at least 5).  There are a lot of options.  You will not get all of your choices, you will get a selection of your choices depending on what is available.  For example, you can’t just load up on ground beef and chicken breasts to fulfill your 20 lbs.

Got to say I was a little excited to see what I would get with my delivery.  The box above arrived exactly as expected – everything was packed in dry ice.  We ended up getting: ground beef, sausage of the month, hot Italian sausage, pork chops, beef sirloin steaks, beef brisket, beef roast, chicken legs.  I also got the bacon, eggs, and butter as an add-on. Each was well packaged and labeled – the meat like the steaks and chicken were also labeled with the farmer and farm where it came from – this was a big selling point for me since the transparency of knowing that it comes from a farm that has good practices is important.  For example, the chicken leg quarters were from Ben and Ruth Kane from Alton, NH.  A Google search for them comes up with their blog and website (http://crunchyfarm.blogspot.com/).  Great, they are a real local farm and all of their values look to be well represented.

However, when I looked at the ground beef I didn’t see a farmer or farm name listed.

So I decided to email Walden and ask them for a list of farms that they work with by product.  This was their response (very rapidly):

Hi David,

 Thanks for your question! Because the list of farms we work with changes often, we don’t publish a list. However all of our products with the exception of ground beef, sausage, ham and bacon will have a farm of origin listed on the packaging! Please let us know if you have any further questions!

Best,

Ceilidh

Not exactly the answer I wanted.  Would be good to know that their ground beef is also coming from a particular farm that is doing the right thing.

Onto the next, very important, question – How does it taste?  In my opinion, this meat is some of the best tasting meat that I have cooked myself.  You can definitely taste the difference.  How much of this is placebo effect…

In summary, this is a great service but may not be for everyone.  You have to be open to getting some cuts that you may not usually buy – could be a good thing since you will end up cooking meals that you wouldn’t usually cook – if that’s your thing.  It’s also quite expensive, 21 lbs/$234=$11/lb.  Also, this covers about 3 meals per week – for the rest of the meals you either need to supplement with other sources of meat or eat vegetarian.  Or you need to double the amount you order which gets very expensive.  But it will be some of the best tasting meat you have ever cooked and you will feel good about yourself.