Meat N’ Bone: A Butcher Shop, And So Much More

By Julie Khanna/Khanna Connections

Enjoy curated gastronomy in the heart of Wellington. Meat N’ Bone delivers high-quality meat products throughout South Florida and beyond, and its new boutique in Wellington is a haven for meat lovers.

Chef, traveler and raconteur Anthony Bourdain once claimed that without unique fine foods to enjoy, life is simply not worth living. This is a philosophy that co-founder Gabriel Llauradó has taken to heart with Meat N’ Bone, a discerning purveyor of high-quality meats, poultry and caviar based in South Florida that recently opened a boutique store in the Wellington Marketplace.

Llauradó is passionate about steak and sees himself as a docent of sorts, working with customers to create not just a memorable meal, but an unforgettable dining event.

“Back when we were kids, my mom would take me to the butcher,” Llauradó recalled. “She knew what she wanted, and she asked questions.”

He is looking to replicate that experience with Meat N’ Bone, and encourages customers to come in, spend some time and learn about the vast array of fine meats that the store carries.

“We want to show you our offerings and talk about it. You start asking questions, and we put the beef on the table,” Llauradó said. “We want you to touch the steaks, it’s fresh meat. Anything with a bone has a different shelf life, so some of the cuts are frozen, but we strive for freshness.”

With four boutique locations in Miami, Parkland, Pinecrest and Wellington, with a fifth opening in Hallandale Beach later this year, Meat N’ Bone delivers to all of Miami-Dade, Broward and most of Palm Beach County, and can deliver for free if customers schedule deliveries ahead of time. Meat N’ Bone also offers a Grill Master service for private events.

“Let’s say you want to host an event at your house, but you don’t feel like standing at the grill all night. For $200 plus the cost of the meat, we can bring a guy who cooks to order,” Llauradó explained. “Each one of our guys has hundreds of hours of grill experience and knows our products, so it’s much more unique than going out to a steakhouse.”

Llauradó created Meat N’ Bone with co-founder Luis Mata after being frustrated by the mediocre meat offerings found in Miami. Since then, it has grown exponentially. While the majority of sales are through their web site, the boutique stores allow customers a different way of buying meat.

Creating exclusive gastronomic affairs is at the heart of Meat N’ Bone’s culture, and one of the ways they cultivate this is through their dry aging and alcohol-infusion process.

Dry aging is the difference between the steak you grill in the backyard and the steaks you get when eating out. A process which both helps tenderness and intensifies flavor, large cuts of beef are aged between one month to several months before being cut into steaks.

“We have one of the best dry-age programs in the nation; we dry age in Chicago,” Llauradó said. “The thing about dry aged is it’s not for everybody. When you cook it, it has a little bit of a nutty flavor. It’s not that commonly found, and it’s not that simple to source. Our 45-day dry-aged tomahawk is incredibly flavorful.”

The concept of alcohol-infused steak came about during the pandemic. While the rest of the country was in lockdown making sourdough bread, Llauradó was conceptualizing how to combine the classic combination of steaks and spirits.

“I’m an avid drinker,” Llauradó said with a warm chuckle. “When dry aging, we infused the muscles with liquor. We did single malt whiskey, and it was delicious, but my favorite is the rum. We partnered up with Diplomático, a Venezuelan rum brand, and it was amazing. The sugar from the rum stays there, and when you cook it, you get an incredible crust.”

In addition to dry-aged steak, Meat N’ Bone prides itself on sourcing rare cuts of meat only found in the most exclusive of retailers. Picanha Steak Wagyu is highly sought-after, much beloved in Brazil, and almost impossible to find in the United States — unless you’re Gabriel Llauradó.

“It has a fat cap that crisps up beautifully when cooked, and a delicious buttery flavor that’s almost addictive,” he said. “Our Picanhas come from a family-owned company, and we have compared this program to others from major chains, finding that it consistently tastes better.”

Meat N’ Bone also carries the rarest steak in the world, the heralded New York Olive Sanuki Wagyu, a Japanese A5 Wagyu from Shodoshima Island, where cattle breeding goes back over a millennium.

“Olive-fed Wagyu comes from steers raised on a special feed of olive mulch and has become famous for its higher levels of oleic acid and nutty taste,” Llauradó said. “The texture is soft and buttery; the fat is sweet and very digestible.”

For those with a discerning palate who prefer seafood or pork to beef, Meat N’ Bone offers wild-caught African tiger prawns and Jamon Iberico from Spain.

“Our pork chops come from Farm Vera Vieja in Badajoz, Spain, from black Iberian pigs who roam freely and are fed a diet of grass and grain,” Llauradó said. “We call it the Wagyu of pork.”

A trip to Meat N’ Bone is less a trip to the butcher and more the start of a culinary journey. Llauradó is passionate about great food and bringing people together.

“Most people will learn more about beef in one visit to Meat N’ Bone than in a lifetime of buying from the supermarket,” he said.

Meat N’ Bone’s Wellington boutique is located at 13837 Wellington Trace, Suite B7, in the Wellington Marketplace. For more information, call (877) 448-6328 or visit www.meatnbone.com.