Electric City Butcher Michael Puglisi Walks Us Through a Day in His Life
Written By: Raphael Madrid
Photography Provided By: Nicholas Iverson Photography Butcher Santa Ana
In the food industry, quality and care are the king and queen when it comes to providing superior service. Electric City Butcher is downtown Santa Ana’s premier specialist for all things meat. This chef-driven shop provides responsibly-sourced, hormone-free meat, all hand-cut to order. Couple that with a fantastic team that’s uniformly attentive to detail, and you get a butcher shop that will quickly win your heart. After learning about how Main Butcher, Michael Puglisi, tackles the day at the shop, you will see why Electric City Butcher warrants a visit real soon.
Early mornings at Electric City Butcher usually begin with moments of reflection. When Puglisi spends his time opening the shop alone, this allows him the opportunity to meditate on how to best set the tone for the day—often through decisions regarding the best and newest cuts to display. “Opening the shop is always a meditative experience,” Puglisi says. “I love to set the case to reflect the choicest cuts and newest products we’ve worked so hard on for that day.”
By the time mid-morning and noon rolls around, they’ve received their regular delivery straight from the USDA facility and begin a detailed process of linking sausages, smoking bacon, portioning out bone broth and anything customers want prepared. “We custom-cut, so the animals we get stay whole until they are ready for our guests to enjoy,” explains Puglisi. “We’re the third set of hands to touch our proteins and I’m reminded of that every time.”
2:30-3 p.m. is typically revered as “Family Meal” time. This is the team’s opportunity to decompress and bask in their hard work…the opportunity to “appreciate the delicious proteins that make this shop successful,” Michael explains. For a brief moment in the day, they are able to take time out from being butchers and express their creativity, to be chefs and artists for themselves once more. “It’s also the time the team can appreciate the proteins that make our shop successful,” notes Puglisi.
As the cornerstone of downtown Santa Ana’s 4th Street Market, Electric City Butcher has their days cut out for them. Between being a full-service custom-cut butcher shop, purveyors of sandwiches that are literally “off-the-hoof” and proud educators of all things meat (they even have bi-weekly classes!), Electric City Butcher has cemented their status as one of Downtown Santa Ana’s best gems.
Native Knowledge: Electric City Butcher also brings cuts across the hall to their restaurant stall at 4th Street Market, Off the Hoof, where they serve sandwiches and BBQ from the same sustainable meats they sell in the shop.
Electric City Butcher
201 E 4th St
Santa Ana, CA 92701
714.474.9096 Butcher Santa Ana
