Husband and wife owners Rob and Allie Levitt — head butcher and baker respectively — opened The Butcher & Larder, Chicago’s only sustainable, all-whole animal butcher shop, in 2011. At the now-shuttered Mado restaurant, where they won a Michelin Bib Gourmand as the chef and pastry chef, the young Levitts had forged relationships with small, Midwestern farm families who raised their animals responsibly. They’ve now set up shop further down Milwaukee Avenue in Noble Square, where the Levitts and their tight band of butchering chefs custom cut meat on an expansive butcher-block table out in the middle of the shop. It’s performance art meets meat. They offer the community more than just steaks and chops, making their own bacon, ham, corned beef, sausages, pâté, and other assorted charcuterie. Perhaps more importantly, they engage in dialogue, sometimes suggesting a lesser known, less expensive cut—and other times pull out a special occasion piece. Those who want to sink their teeth into even more will find author events and special classes. Except for Sunday, they serve a daily-changing menu of only two sandwiches—one hot, one cold. A recent pork belly creation: tender meat chilled then sliced tissue-thin, on bread soaked with crisp and super-hot house-made giardiniera. In the winter they add soups, like an intensely rich oxtail soup that might have served as a blood transfusion in a pinch. Feel free to eat in at the standing counter; there are no tables.
