When Tom and I met, he had already studied abroad in high school; gone to La Escuela de Hoselería de Leioa culinary school in Spain; managed an American Beef Farm; and studied at L’ecole National Superieure des Metiers de la Viande (the French National School of Butchery in Paris). I had a degree in Urban Studies and was completing my PhD in Architecture had lived for six months in New York and six months in Paris, and had spent years traveling and walking the streets of Europe and Asia, marveling at the built environments, and soaking up the layers of time revealed on each corner.

We quickly realized we both loved small European neighborhood shops, amazing food, and the warm and welcoming feel of established neighborhoods. And we wanted to bring all those things back to our own corner of the world in the States.

We opened our first butcher shop on Grant Street in Buffalo in 2018, which we ran part time. When we found our present building (a former Italian restaurant on Elmwood), we knew we were home (literally... we originally lived above the shop with our three children). With a careful eye to ensuring everything was done right from start to finish, we opened our full-time shop in March of 2020 and our café in the autumn of 2021. What comes next as we continue to build and grow is anyone’s guess, but we can guarantee it will be wrapped up in our values of quality, community, culture, curiosity and connection.