Village Prime Meat Shoppe

When he opened his East Quogue butcher shop in 1989, Sonny Mattera called it Village Prime Meat Shoppe for reasons that are lost to the mists of time. "From the beginning, everybody always called it Sonny's," Mattera said, "and if I had it to do over again, I should have just called it Sonny's."

Sonny's was the name of the Astoria butcher shop Mattera owned for 30 years before moving east. He and his family had long been spending weekends in the Hamptons, and his wife, Claire, who died in 1994, urged him to move the business. "My wife loved to cook," Mattera said, "and she wanted to expand so she could cook for the store."

So, in addition to the hand-cut meat and handmade sausage, the Matteras began to sell prepared foods. The recipes gradually were codified and now reside in a tattered composition notebook whose pages are nearly translucent with grease, stored in a drawer in the kitchen's main work table. Some of the recipes are in Claire's hand, others were neatly typed by her daughter Linda and taped onto the notebook's pages. (Linda is also the store's bookkeeper; her brother Michael works full-time alongside his father; brother John, a part-timer, makes all the pasta.)

In addition to prepared foods, the store has evolved into an Italian specialty emporium, with a fine selection of olive oils and condiments, pastas, sweets, cured meats and cheeses. Still, about half of sales come from meat, and Mattera has found that his East End customers are largely indifferent to price. "They just want the best," he said. "They want to buy a steak that makes the company say, 'Where did you get this?'" And Mattera is happy to comply.

--Erica Marcus