Spike Gjerde On His Butcher Shop Concept

Baltimore chef Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen cooked up some skewers with Toki Underground's Erik Bruner-Yang, and while the two of them may not have any projects coming up together, Gjerde has two on the line in Baltimore.

Baltimore Food Hub is still set for a fall 2014 opening, Gjerde told us, and while his upcoming butcher shop restaurant doesn't have an opening date, the concept seems pretty set.

"[We're going to] take what we do, whole animal butchery, which we do a great deal of at the restaurant, and bring a freestanding operation," Gjerde told us Saturday at the Sweetlife Festival. "Bring it into a retail setting which would be amazing and build a little dine out experience around it as well."

All the animals will be sourced locally, Gjerde said, which means diners will be seeing beef, pork, lamb, goat, "poultry of various kinds, and anything else that becomes available." Gjerde hopes to have a wood-burning oven like that have at Woodberry, preparing foods simply with live fire cooking (potentially with a hearth, chef de cuisine George Marsh told us).

"Most of the stuff we're going to be serving at the butcher shop would be things we're also going to be producing for retail," Marsh said. "The restaurant component will double as a way for us to utilize all the products." They'll be selling and cooking rare cuts of beef, Marsh said, like spider steaks, pork skirts, coulettes, and different types of sausages, including emulsified and fermented sausages. 

The team is keeping opening dates and potential names under tight wraps as of now, but past reports note that the new Remington site will have 5,000 square feet for the restaurant alone.