R&S Meat Market in Huntington focuses on quality

When his customers started talking about antibiotic- and hormone-free beef, Anthony Chinappi listened. “It’s not about price here,” said the owner of R&S Meat Market in Huntington, “it’s about quality.”

Chinappi started researching and settled on Painted Hills Beef, an Oregon-based consortium of ranchers whose cattle are raised on a vegetarian diet with no hormones or antibiotics. For customers who are looking for the classic flavor of dry-aged prime, Chinappi ages his own primal cuts for five to seven weeks, until they have a funky minerality of a fine steakhouse steak. (Depending on type and cut, beef prices range from $24 to $30 a pound.)

Chinappi upgraded from Bell & Evans chickens to what he feels is the better-tasting, more consistent birds from Crystal Valley in Indiana ($4.49 a pound). And in addition to “regular” pork, he sells pork from Berkshire pigs whose meat is richer and more flavorful. (Regular loin chops are $5.99, Berkshire are $14.99.)

From the specialty purveyor D’Artagnan come ducks and turkeys and cured meats. R&S sells a wide range of ready-to-cook meats, such as bacon-wrapped Berkshire loin roasts ($14.99) and broccoli-cheese-stuffed chicken-breast roasts ($7.99). And for the non-cook, there are homemade soups, “shake and serve” salads sold in Mason jars with the dressing on the bottom and the greens on the top, bread from Manhattan’s Sullivan Street Bakery and Jamon Iberico, the famous salt-cured ham from Spain. It costs $96 a pound and Chinappi reports that he sells more of it now than he has ever sold of Italian Prosciutto di Parma.