East Village Gets Less Meaty This Weekend

The New York Times includes an article today featuring a family-owned East Village butcher shop that is closing its doors after 52 years of business. The article is worth reading if just for the fantastic shot of proprietor Jaroslaw Kurowycky breaking the news to a woman who is clasping her hands to her chest in distress. Kurowycky Meat Products was opened in 1955, by Jaroslaw Kurowycky's grandfather and the Times actually wrote about the butcher shop before, in a 1975 article titled “A Mecca for Sausage and Ham Lovers.”

The Times' sendoff profile of the East Village institution certainly makes it sound like it has some devoted customers. One woman told the paper "I was a vegetarian at one point, and then their bacon was my downfall.” But Kurowycky noted that as eating habits changed, his business was falling off more and more each year, to the point where he made the decision to close his shop. Otherwise, he seemed disinclined to point to any one salient factor as his reason for ending a three-generation legacy.