For years, the name Crown Heights Butcher has been synonymous with top quality meats together with top notch kashrus. With the newly opened Albany Avenue location, they are promising to bring things up to the next level.
By Anash.org reporter
Photos: Mendy Kotlyar/Anash.org
If you ask owner Meir Kabakov, Crown Heights Butcher is more than a store. Its a window into the Crown Heights community.
Back in 5777, Kabakov saw a need for a revolution in the Crown Heights kosher scene. With the continued industrialization of Kosher meat, it became increasingly difficult to track the source, and by extension the shochtim and mashgichim, of the meat we eat. As a result, one frequently had to choose between high quality meat or high quality kashrus.
Enter Crown Heights Butcher. With small shechita runs and the strict hashgacha of the Crown Heights Beis Din, anyone could purchase meat and poultry with a content heart, knowing that he will be able to keep to the highest standards in all fields.
But Crown Heights Butcher goes far beyond just a shechita run. Their storefront on Troy Avenue, right near Oholei Torah Mesivta, offers a wide variety of deli and Shabbos takeout, fish, poultry, lamb, cold cuts and much more besides for the regular cuts of beef. The shop also carries special aged meats and other cuts that are only available because they have their own runs and thus have full control of what they bring in.
Only short time after Crown Heights Butcher opened, the ballooning demand had them move into a larger location near their original shop. But just a few years later, even that larger location wasn’t big enough. So Kabakov decided to open a second location on Albany Avenue between Eastern Parkway and Union, just minutes from 770 Eastern Parkway.
On Thursday, the new shop held a soft opening. Rabbi Yosef Braun of the Crown Heights Beis Din, who oversees the kashrus of both stores, was honored with putting up the mezuza, and friends and the first customers gathered for a l’chaim, wishing much success to the new shop.
“The new shop will service those who live in the ‘higher’ parts of Crown Heights, making it easier for them to come shop as well,” Kabakov told Anash.org. “The new shop will offer all the amenities offered at our Troy Avenue location, plus more.”
Some of the features of the new shop include two self-checkout kiosks, which allow a quick in-store experience. A specialized fridge carries aged meats, and a full deli service is offered as well.
But to Kabakov, the main feature of the new store, and of their second location on Troy Avenue as well, is the community element.
“Our shochtim – Rabbi Chezy Posner and Rabbi Ezra Tzfasman, are from the Crown Heights community. Our mashgichim – and we have a mashgiach tmidi in both locations – are from our community. The shechita runs are made with our community in mind. We are proud to call Crown Heights Butcher a community shop, and we work hard to live up to that name,” he said.
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