Elite meat
How a Jersey butcher shop became the beef supplier of the 1 percent
B ARELY four months after its debut on a commercial strip in the heart of Jersey City, the traditional Argentine butcher Pampita has seemingly done the impossible: Convinced moguls, billionaires and other assorted 1-percenters to cross the Hudson River in search of good steaks.
Lured by quiet marketing and almost cultlike word-of-mouth, these cash-rich carnivores — or their delivery men and drivers — are serving Pampita’s grassfed beef to their equally starry friends and family at posh tables from Montauk to Madison Avenue.
Douglas Elliman real estate megamillionaire Howard Lorber sliced up Pampita steaks at a dinner party last weekend in Southampton. Socialite and Broadway producer Francine LeFrak swoons over Pampita’s “impeccable service and highest-quality” products, she tells The Post. The Consulate General of Argentina ordered Pampita meats for an upcoming tourism event. And Garden State notables ranging from former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop have all popped in or placed orders.
Pampita takes its name from the Pampas — vast swaths of open plains that stretch along Argentina’s heartland. Lorded over by the mythical gauchos, or South American cowboys, and covered in sweet, pure grasses, the terrain is ideal for growing ultra-lean, ultra-flavorful beef.
“Because the Pampas are so flat, cows run freely, which translates into the tenderest meat you can buy,” says Buenos Aires-born Claudia Walters, who opened Pampita with her son, Pablo Kaufmann. “And since they only eat grass — and are never given antibiotics or hormones — their taste is incredibly unique.”
An international lawyer by trade, Walters conceived Pampita as a tribute to both her homeland’s meats and its rich meat culture. Along with Kaufmann, who works primarily in finance, she spent six months transforming a former travel agency into a sleek, white-tiled butcher shop with apothecary-style display cases upfront and cutting tables and prep kitchens in the back.
At their side is master butcher and Pampita partner Martin Miguez, an Argentine native who’s been handling choice carne for decades. Walter and Kaufmann source the meat from select suppliers in both South America (specifically Uruguay, which borders Argentina) and Nebraska, which boasts its own fabled plains that evoke the Pampas in temperature and terrain. For the moment, it’s illegal to import raw meat from Argentina to the United States — a ban with roots in a 2001 outbreak of hand-foot-and-mouth disease among the country’s cattle herds. “So we chose Uruguay because they raise meat as close as possible to how we do in Argentina,” says Kaufmann. He hopes that Argentina will soon clear a regulatory hurdle that would allow imports to resume.
In the meantime, Miguez is handling Pampita’s meats just as he would in his native country.
“Americans usually butcher cows horizontally, which results in roughly 15 to 20 cuts of meat,” he says. “But in Argentina, we cut meat vertically for nearly twice as many cuts.”
Since its debut, Pampita has gone from selling roughly 750 pounds of beef per week to more than 3,000. That figure represents customers — mostly real estate, finance, media, tech and fashion types — from nearly every corner of the tri-state region.
One hungry carnivore even spent a meaty $5,100 on a single order over the Fourth of July holiday — a Pampita record, Kaufmann says.
Each week, Pampita delivers to Brooklyn, Manhattan, Locust Valley, LI, and the Hamptons (and will soon expand to equally upscale enclaves such as Greenwich, Conn., Westchester County, NY, and Alpine, NJ). The shop is also eyeing a second location in Manhattan.
Many of Pampita’s early clients were friends of Walters, who lives on the Upper East Side. But because the shop keeps most cuts below $17.50 per pound, it’s also become a mainstay among locals of more modest means. Best sellers include the entraña (skirt steak), tira de asado (short ribs) and matambre (a superthin rib cut usually rolled and filled with vegetables, eggs and herbs). All extras — including the rich alfajores (dulce de leche-filled cookies) and hearty empanadas — are prepared in-house.
Both are as addictive as Pampita’s signature cuts and chops. Just ask Elliman’s Lorber: Long after his final guest had left last weekend, “I found myself sneaking into the kitchen to have a late-night taste of the empanadas,” he tells The Post. “I cannot live without them.”