Saturday - Grand Opening Party at Valley Farm Butchers

During the week, several Gringos that we met suggested that we attend a Grand Opening Event on Saturday at Valley Farm Butcher's new store on Gran Columbia, just a few blocks down from our apartment. Valley Farm Butchers is comprised of a husband and wife team - he's British and she's Ecuadorian. The own a farm about 30-minutes outside Cuenca.  Julian is a butcher and all the Ex-Pats in Cuenca say that he has the best cuts of meat you can get in Ecuador - certainly Cuenca.

In the past, Valley Farm Butchers would charter a private bus on Saturdays and have customers come out to their farm to socialize and enjoy cooked samples of their meats. Evidently that had been so successful, they decided to open-up a store in Cuenca - kind of a butcher shop and deli.

Besides cuts of meat, they had a great selection of good cheeses, which is evidently hard to get here, unless it's goat cheese.

There were a lot of people there, mostly Gringos. The order of the day seemed to be hamburgers, either beef or lamb. Evidently that is one thing that everyone misses from back home. Dana and I had a hot ham and cheese sandwich that was very good. But best of all, we met a lot of folks and heard their stories about how they ended-up in Cuenca. It was a good time.

I asked several guys how they cooked their steaks here. Just about everyone cooked on an iron skillet on the stove top. Charcoal here is some chucked wood that burns hot and fast - so no one is really smoking their meat. You can get a propane grill here, but they are expensive. I was explaining to one fellow that a homemade cold smoker (like what we see in GA made out of 55gal barrels) might be the way to go.  They said the restaurant Roux (where we are having brunch on Sunday) has a specially designed smoker like that. So I will take a look at it tomorrow.

Here are some photos...

Price Board for Cuts of Meat (price/lb)

A little more appetizing than the Mercado meat selection?

For dinner, Dana and I made fresh guacamole from the produce we purchased at the Mercardo. It was good, but a bit limey. The limes here are so small, that we used two - but evidently these little limes are concentrated.