Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Restaurant butchers whole animals for gourmet sandwiches
While most of Boynton Beach is asleep, chef Daniel Ramos is grinding sausage, cooking bone broth and roasting loins from butchered hogs in his new restaurant, Butcher and the Bar.
Ramos, a self-described workaholic, sticks to a rigid predawn routine. He’s up before the sun, mulling the shop’s daily menu over a mug of hot coffee in his back yard. By daybreak the chef is hauling away dozens of hamburger buns and ciabatta rolls from Old School Bakery in Delray Beach, a major supplier to 150 local restaurants and bars. By 9 a.m., when doors open, Ramos has scratchmade buttermilk biscuits in the oven, fresh-cut bacon on the grill and pork saddles ready to roast for that day’s porchetta sandwiches.
“We even dehydrate the pig skin to make doggy treats,” Ramos says. “We use every part of the animal, so nothing goes to waste in this kitchen.”
Premium cuts butchered from whole animals is how Ramos rolls at this Boynton Beach butchery, sandwich shop and cocktail bar, which debuted in August at 510 E. Ocean Ave. Along with sourcing meats from Florida pasture farms, Ramos and his crew grind hot dogs, sausages and hamburgers and top them with homemade condiments, dressings and vinai
grettes.
The 2,400-square-foot restaurant is still in softopening mode — their liquor license came last week — as Ramos and business partners Eric Anderson, Marit Hedeen and chef-butcher-partner Jason Brown train frontof-house staff ahead of dinner service launching in two weeks.
But Ramos, who lives in Boynton Beach, is by far Butcher and the Bar’s meat guru. He built a cult fanbase making bone broth and homemade sausage at his Red Splendor booth at green markets and brewery pop-ups in Delray Beach and Lake Worth.
And he’s keen to school any customer about the benefits of buying Floridaraised meat. A farm in Groveland supplies whole heritage-breed hogs while two near Sebring provide their beef. Farms in Loxahatchee Groves and Boynton Beach purvey Ramos’ daily supply of eggs and whole chickens, while a family farm in west Boynton, owned by his wife’s aunt, supplies their flowers, herbs and chili peppers.
“We train our staff not to use the phrase ‘farm-totable,’” says Ramos, who worked previously at Sundy House in Delray Beach and the late Market 17 in Fort Lauderdale. “Every restaurant should find one local supplier and use it. We’ve got someone who brings us a heritagebreed hog every week. We’ll get local cucumbers, brine them and make bread-and-butter pickles. Chicken thighs and legs get roasted and go into our chicken meatballs. I treat the animal with respect and help it become something more than it was.”
All meats are cooked with gourmet preparation, such as Ramos’ porchetta on ciabatta bread, made from boneless, rolled pork roast.
“We buy the whole loin with belly attached,” says Ramos, who then rubs the pork with lemon zest, parsley, shaved fennel and garlic before binding it with twine. “We roast it for four hours. You take a bite right out of the oven, and your ears hurt because the crunchy, crackling skin is so loud inside your mouth.”
Dinner and dine-in service will begin next week, he says, but for now the eatery is strictly an over-the-counter sandwich shop and butcher. The restaurant will always have a daily rotating menu of five or six items, including a sandwich of the day, inspired by meats Ramos and Brown have in their butcher cases.
Butcher and the Bar’s cocktail bar will debut 12 cocktails next week, and dispense craft beer from meat cleaver-shaped tap handles. (The motif continues at the front door handles, made of salvaged meat cleavers, and the décor, where 100-year-old hog splitters hang on the walls.)