Meat worth going out of your way for.

Michael Luzzi grew up in New Jersey, in a family where dinner was the main event of the day. He cooked. He still cooks. And for years he kept coming home from the supermarket with the same disappointment sitting in the bag — ground chuck of unknown parentage, steaks cut days ago and wrapped in plastic, sausage that arrived with an ingredients list instead of a recipe. Nobody to ask which cut to use. Nobody who could tell him where any of it came from.

He got tired of complaining about it. So he learned to butcher, and opened the shop he'd been looking for.

Dino's is what that looks like in practice. Whole primals come in and get broken down here, on the block, by hand. Trim gets ground the same day it's cut — that's the only way we make ground beef. The Italian sausage is mixed and stuffed in the back to a recipe, not a spec sheet. The case gets built fresh each morning, and whatever doesn't sell doesn't quietly reappear tomorrow.

The part that's hardest to put on a sign: there's a person behind the counter who actually knows the answer. Ask what to buy for eight people on Sunday, or how long to rest a standing rib roast, or what to do with a cut you've never cooked, and you'll get a real answer — from the man who owns the place, because he's the one standing there.

Michael Luzzi — Owner & Butcher