New York butcher offers smoked meat and supports Ukraine

In This series for T, author Reggie Nadelson revisits institutions in New York that have been defined for decades, from long-established restaurants to never-before-seen dive spots.

This spring in the East Village, green and yellow flags flutter in the breeze. Signs of support for Ukraine also hung in the window, along with rings of kielbasa and a loaf of Lithuanian rye bread, at Dong Village Meat Market, a butcher and grocery store at 139 Second Avenue. The name of the founder, J. Baczynsky, the letter “J.” stands for Julian, still adorned on the façade. A Ukrainian immigrant, he opened the shop in 1970 and in the half century since, it has become a neighborhood anchor – and, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, a gathering point. suitable for sympathetic New Yorkers of all backgrounds.

At the center of the store is its current owner, Andrew Ilnicki, who presides over a group of mostly Ukrainian-speaking butchers and staff. As we chat, shoppers pass: a young man wearing an emerald green cycling helmet buys a giant horseradish that doubles as a weapon; an elderly Ukrainian man searches for stuffed cabbage, one of the store’s home-cooked dishes; and a woman in tight black jeans dashed in as her car plowed down the curb to ask if there was a fresh cheese babka the next morning for her to serve at brunch. Will have.

East Village has long been home to immigrants from Eastern Europe, and many of the dishes that New Yorkers like me think of as Jewish — borscht, potato pie, stuffed cabbage — of course also like Ukrainian or Polish. Customers stop in to enjoy the comforts of home, or at least their grandmother’s, and to enjoy steaks and ribs, brisket and short ribs or jelly pork legs, salami and pierogi’s. Hungary is stored in glass display cases in front of and along the shelves of the narrow space. In the back, a refrigerator stocked with ham, cheese and herring.

“We buy our kielbasa and ham from the Meat Market,” says Jason Birchard, third-generation owner of Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant on 2nd Avenue. “It’s the best there is, for a reasonable price.”

“What I like about the Meat Market is that it’s a small town shop in a big, big city. The food is delicious and the butchers will remember you,” says Sally Roy, a film and television producer who has lived in the East Village for decades. “In what seems like an unknown city, they treat you like a friend.” Roy currently lives in the suburbs, but never returns to the area without buying the city’s ham, a specialty Meat market with very little fat.

Personally, I love the country pork, a different kind of pork. “The whole process is natural. We use a minimum of salt, and the smoking and grilling is done using natural wood,” says Ilnicki of the store’s meat products. He spends many early mornings preparing the kielbasa before hanging it up for the shop’s 50-year-old smokers. It is made with pork and a small amount of beef. Anything else? Ilnicki smiled, pointing out the “secret spice”.

An elegant guy with intense blue eyes, Ilnicki spent his adult life at the store. It’s a story he loves to tell: He came to New York in 1980, at the age of 17, from the city of Jelenia Góra in southwestern Poland. An aunt invited him and one of his brothers to live with her in the United States, on St. Mark’s Place. “I have no English,” he said, but there was a rumor about a job opening at the Meat Market. “I wanted to be a butcher, even though I didn’t know how,” he recalls. Baczynsky brought him in anyway, and within a year had shown him everything he needed to know.

He and “the boss,” as Ilnicki called him, became as close as father and son. Ilnicki chuckles as he recounts memories of how Baczynsky led a wealthy life, dining at the city’s great French restaurants and buying suits from Bijan, the famous Iranian designer. Ilnicki stayed at the store when he studied accounting and finance at NYU. “In those early days, I kept going,” says Ilnicki. He married his “200% Ukrainian” wife, Olha, and they raised their two children on East Seventh Street, the same block as St. George Ukraine, where they are active members.

In the late ’80s, Baczynsky suffered from a health phobia and his wife urged him to retire, so he began the process of transferring the store to Ilnicki and another colleague, Antoni Tychanski. Last year, Tychanski himself retired, and Baczynsky passed away at the age of 98. Ilnicki is still there, his passion for the community evident to anyone who comes across.

On the counter towards the entrance of the Meat Market is a jar filled with receipts – donations to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. “Before the invasion, nobody talked much about Ukraine,” Ilnicki said. “But now that’s all. People give me cash and checks, say, “You’ll know what to do with this.” “Of course, we read all the newspapers and watch the news, but everyone here who has relatives in Ukraine, including my wife, is always calling to try to get more information.”

“Andrew has been very important in our efforts towards Ukraine, especially in our partnership with St. George, received much needed supplies for Ukraine. “Canned food, medical supplies, sleeping bags. He is a great friend. ”

As Ilnicki and I sat down to enjoy grilled kielbasa with horseradish in Veselka, he saw Birchard and called out to him. The two men have worked at their respective spots on Second Avenue since they were teenagers. “We even have a lot in common in Ukraine,” Birchard told me later on the phone. “He is very caring. He had his upbringing from Mr. Baczynsky, who was a father figure to the whole neighborhood, and he was wearing his mantle. He learned from the best.”

Over the weekend, I ran into Tobi Rauscher, a German friend who lives in St. Marks Place and works for Google. “I went into the Meat Market not too long ago because I saw their sweets and pies on display in the window. I get what in my region is called krapfen and in other places Berliner – what you call a jelly donut,” he said of his native Bavaria, which staff at Meat Market refer to with an acronym. Ukrainian language, pampushky. He also has a beef loaf. “They are delicious,” he said. “They remind me of home.”