Avendano owners (from left) Angela Wilson, Tia Harrison and Melanie Eismann

Neighborhood meat market carves their niche

—By Julia Dodge

In the San Francisco Bay Area, women and meat don’t usually mix. But for these three “butcheresses” (this word’s not even in the dictionary) it was an opportunity to restore a neighborhood staple pushed out of business long ago by large supermarket chains: the butcher shop.

Avedano’s — A Holly Park Market, a Bernal Heights corner shop adorned with deer skulls and mid-century posters and cookbooks, opened in 2007 as one of the only woman-owned butcher shops in the country. Owners Melanie Eismann, Tia Harrison and Angela Wilson avoided opening yet another restaurant in San Francisco’s saturated market and instead opted for a business of hauling carcasses, teaching classes in butchery and sausage making, and preparing to-go fried chicken dinners.

“The primary goal was to offer customers an old-time sense of community and family while also promoting the modern-day concepts of organic and sustainable farming,” says Harrison. “We’re a meat business with morals.”

Once Cicero’s Meats, a turn-of-the-century family-owned butcher shop, Avedano’s became a tribute to the first proprietor, displaying many of the original signs, antique furnishings and carving tools to preserve the nostalgic feel. Something new came out of the restoration, however: a side room with 1960’s cattle murals for private parties and classes, aptly named “The Utter Room.”

Classes in butchery and carving—taught by Harrison once per month and booked out four to five months in advance—involve cutting a suckling pig and a full-sized lamb, and students get to take home about ten pounds of their meaty carvings. “The classes are for people interested in the food movement of knowing where your food comes from,” she says, “It’s pretty fun to watch a petite female sawing up a lamb.”

The newest addition to the Avedano’s team is Chris Arentz, an Italian butcher who apprenticed in Tuscany. He has recently brought pasta-making and curing classes to the shop, and has added savory Italian pork recipes to the always-changing seasonal menu.

Vegetarians also won’t frown at Avedano’s family meal offerings, from bins of organic red creamer potatoes and hard-to-find sea beans to specialty items such as fig and black tea jam and spiced bourbon tomato conserve. Many of the dishes on the prepared foods menu were inspired by Flora Avedano, the maiden name of Harrison’s grandmother whose family immigrated to San Francisco from Italy only days before the 1906 earthquake.

And after numerous Bay Area awards for their carnal delights, no doubt Papa Cicero would be proud of the legacy.