Service keeps meat shop a step ahead of competition

Originally published Saturday, March 22, 1997

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Morrey Eskenazi's White Center Meat Co. is a cut above anything around here that even pretends to be a quality meat market. It's like paging through the Victoria's Secret catalog, only at Morrey's you can sample.

A mother walks in with an enthusiastic 3-year-old boy who grins when he spots Morrey behind the long refrigerator case counter and dashes to the far end, where Morrey smiles and asks: "You've been a good boy, right? And maybe you'd like something special ... like, maybe one of these hot dogs?"

The indulgent mother smiles as her little helper plugs his smile with a fresh hot dog and Morrey greets her with his anachronistic: "So, Sweetheart, how's it going with you today?" He gets away with it because that's the way the Eskenazi family's been doing business here, up close and personal, into a third generation of customers.

This whole shop is something of an anachronism in today's shrink-wrapped world. There's still a 1900 vintage, bronze National cash register on the back wall, below a fine set of Highlander steer horns.

The shop is gleaming white tile and stainless steel, a tad chilly by today's supermarket-shopping standards, with scrubbed oak refrigerated display counters and never-frozen meats symmetrically displayed au naturel in an unbroken line of variety, from the smoked ham hocks and spareribs in the front to the hot dogs at the far end, next to that little 3-year-old shopper.

Behind the counter, where he's worked for 36 of the almost 50 years this shop has operated, Morrey presents as the neatly pressed, shirt-and-tied and white-smocked maitre d' to the shoppers. Not a hair out of place, never too busy to lean over the counter and schmooze with a shopper about what's happening in his/her life or things in general.

"I can't compete -- I won't compete with the supermarket meat 'Specials' and how they operate," Morrey said. "I can only offer personal service and top quality, and even people who say they want that will often just go the quick route and grab a supermarket special and run."

They know, without looking at the public health department's monthly inspection report posted on the bulletin board at the front door, that this is what a great meat market is supposed to be.

Clean is obvious. So is quality. All Black Angus choice beef, and Washington fresh chicken and turkey, and Washington pork.

Three times each week, Morrey makes the best Chinese-style barbecued pork loin I've ever tasted. And his maple-cured, wood-smoked hams, ham hocks, bacon, sausages and jerky are truly wonderful. The hams are low-salt and 12-hour-smoked, and the game hens, pork loin, spareribs and chicken are salt- and preservative-free.

His huge gas-fired smoker at the rear of his long, narrow meat market is doing its thing six days a week, but never unattended. Morrey is a stickler about quality, and he swears there's never been one customer complaint, except maybe coming away with more than they'd intended.

No customers paw over this meat.

"You see it all, up close, just the way I've trimmed it, and before it's wrapped," he said. "And I can guarantee that every piece in that cabinet is fresh, and has been kept at 35 to 37 degrees."

Only Morrey trims, grinds, smokes, arranges and custom wraps meat in this one-butcher operation, from before sunrise to after sunset, six days every week.

"I rest on Sundays, but I haven't had a vacation in more than 10 years, and not one day lost because of bad weather or sickness," he said, knocking on the work-worn wooden shelf behind the oak-and-glass display counter. "I'm like a dairy farmer who can't trust his herd to anyone else. I have to be here to take care of my customers."

More like a minister, some would say. He listens, he counsels, he reaches out.

"Here, try some of this and tell me if that's not the best smoked ham you've ever tasted."

If that ain't rhetorical, then that ain't sawdust on the wood-block floor behind the butcher counter. He encourages, cajoles and arm-twists until a customer samples a slice of ham or a piece of jerky. Before you can say "Maybe just a little," he's popped something into the microwave oven behind the counter and handed you a delicious sample.

He delights in showing customers the walk-in smoker, or how he trims certain cuts of meat.

"And I especially like to talk to them about what they want, or think they might want, and what for. That way, I can suggest different meats or cuts, and what goes good with it. Sometimes I think I should've opened a restaurant.

"I'll tell them how long they can keep something before cooking, or how to freeze it. We do custom freezer packing, with any substitution a person wants."

And frankly, the only reason you might need to is the out-of-the-way location of White Center if you happen to live in Woodinville or Everett. But some of Morrey's faithful customers send close-by friends as surrogate shoppers.

"And we ship a surprising number of things like smoked hams and bacon to Hawaii ... people who say they just can't get as good there as we make."

Although his father kept kosher at home, the Jewish father and son have never blanched at handling hams or any other pork products. As long as it was the best possible meat they could offer. Up until recently, when wholesale supply of half- or quarter-beefs brought inconsistent quality, they've always "broken" their own fresh-slaughtered beef. Very little else has changed.

The smoker and the microwave, along with upgrades in the refrigeration facilities -- and a newer electronic cash register -- are about the only things that have changed at 9629 15th Ave. S.W., since Morrey's now-departed father, Ike, opened in 1948. Their first gas-fired smoker was replaced after it misfired and almost blew Ike back to his native island of Rhodes.

Nowadays, you also can fax in your order, but you still have to pick it up and risk cruising the counter for some between-meals nibbling.

Oh, and the 400-pound fiberglass Black Angus steer doing pirouettes over the front of the store? That went in about seven years ago.

Not an ounce of fat on it.

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.