Growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania, Justin Seabridge said he learned the craft of processing wild game at a young age, taking regular hunting trips with his family to the wilds of Wyoming and Colorado. Now, he’s drawing upon that training with co-founder Kevin Nishikawa at a brand-new gourmet butcher shop called San Francisco Meat Co., which opens in the heart of Hayes Valley in mid-May.
Seabridge and Nishikawa told The Standard that their new butcher shop will offer a healthy swath of the farm—chicken, pork, lamb, dry-aged Angus beef and domestic wagyu.
The location at Fell and Gough streets most recently belonged to Fatted Calf Charcuterie, which moved into a stall at the Ferry Building last fall. Because the Fatted Calf laid claim to the space for more than a decade, Nishikawa said that in recent weeks, neighbors have been hovering over the front windows, asking him about the future of the space.
Having purchased the Fatted Calf’s liquor license, Seabridge and Nishikawa will be able to sell beer and wine to-go with the help of a certified sommelier that the duo hired to train their staff.
Previously the custom-cut butcher at the Local Butcher Shop in North Berkeley, Seabridge will oversee the back-of-house operations. For his part, Nishikawa comes from a food distribution background. His father started a farm-to-market wholesale company that supplied restaurants and grocery stores throughout the Bay Area for decades.
In addition to the meat counter, which will contain custom dry agers in plain sight, Seabridge said that San Francisco Meat Co. will host butchery classes and live demonstrations, where customers can learn how to process poultry, lamb and half a hog—perhaps inspiring a new generation of custom butchers.