San Antonio, TX | November 2-3 // New York, NY | September 21-22 It’s the heaviest rainstorm of 2012 in New York City. Driving north from midtown Manhattan we can see menacing clouds lurking over Randall’s Island Park, just across the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge from East Harlem. Randall’s Island is home to a major track and field stadium, the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, and the Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. It is also the venue for Meatopia, arguably the most important organized affair for preparing and consuming various types of cooked animal flesh — and also the only one we know about. The GP team’s consensus regarding the rainfall: More meat for us.
Meatopia is the brainchild of Josh Ozersky, food writer and former editor of New York Magazine‘s “Grub Street” blog. It began as his birthday party in the early aughts. In 2012 it is a ticketed event with roughly 38 chefs from around the world, three bands, one butchering contest, countless animal bones decorating the festival grounds, and a thousand-pound steer lifted by forklift onto the “LaFrieda Meat Box”, Pat LaFrieda’s custom all-steel La Caja China-style cooking apparatus.
The rain lets up a bit as it gets dark. We’ve walked from tent to tent, eating Danish meatballs with creamy dill sauce, beef shin bourguignon, Uruguayan-style lamb asado, grilled rib steak with bone marrow butter, mini Balkan burgers, smoked duck neck gumbo, scrapple sliders, a slab of LaFrieda’s steer and lots more. Inside one tent we find a sausage toppings bar, at which the number and complexity of options is staggering. Bewildered and full, we decide to head home. Meatopia is a strange event, indeed, but true carnivores let neither weirdness nor rain come between them and the beef.