Thunderstruck
Following Taste, Finding More
Officina della Bistecca | Panzano, Italy
While I certainly can’t fault him for capitalizing on the moment and commercializing it for as long as interest lasts, there was something a touch contrived or controlled, maybe, about stepping inside Dario Cecchini’s Tuscan empire.
I had hoped the theatrics behind The Butcher were spun out of love and not obligation. I watched in amused but cautious captivation as he performed for the swelling lunch crowd that had gathered on the narrow Panzano village street that cut through his shops and restaurants.
If he didn’t love what he did, I cringed to think, he had to be one of the most lonely, boisterous men in the world.
From the moment my mom and I arrived on that sunny spring afternoon, everything ran like the well-rehearsed production that it was. We were handed small glasses of Chianti, which our generous hosts ensured were never drained below half-full.
And then we waited, not long, but I imagine intentionally.
Someone had done the math. Before officially being invited to take our seats at the community tables upstairs, we did what everyone else did to kill time. We shopped the pop-up stores that occupied an empty storefront next door to all the action. We browsed the official gift shop, ambitiously but tastefully stocked with licensed Butcher merchandise: t-shirts, aprons, wine-stoppers.
All the while, we sipped and munched on passed small bites, shouting over the AC/DC music blasting out of, as was the custom, Cecchini’s small, stuffed-with-tourists butcher shop.
The entire time he held court, basking in the attention, graciously taking pictures with his customers in between trimming, hacking and carving at cuts of meat that slowly came to fill the deli cases in front of him. He was larger-than-life and born, it seemed, to play this very role.
Lunch was, full stop, a lot of fun. It was family-style. Platters of heaping steak tartare, moist and tender steak and crisped potatoes made their way up and down long wooden tables. Windows framed idyllic snapshots of the Tuscan countryside. Strangers from around the world made new friends, filled each other’s wine glasses and swapped tales and travel tips and tricks. By the time the meal was done, we’d taken several selfies with the couple from France and Italy just next to us. Fast friends we’d come to make, who we’d sadly never see or talk to again.
Cecchini, who came onto the international food scene behind boosts from Anthony Bourdain and Netflix’s Chef’s Table, is an eighth-generation butcher. Born, literally it seems, to stand behind this one case at Antica Macelleria Cecchini with cleaver in hand.
I couldn’t help but marvel at how he’s put his own spin on this underappreciated, old-world craft, infusing his own vision and personality into manufactured but heartfelt moments, meals and merchandise. He had skillfully, or at least someone on his team had, adapted it all, too, for today’s consumption and content habits.
Who were the seven generations who had come before him? Were they, too, charming caricatures, Burt Lancasters trapped behind their butcher counter? Did they suit up by calling or by trade?
Dario Cecchini seemed to be a man whose purpose had been handed down to him but who rejected the mold and template that came with it. By all that I had come to see and enjoy at Officina della Bistecca, he had chosen to challenge what he inherited, not conform to it.
What first felt like cringe that afternoon later felt more like curiosity and admiration. Nothing about him said soft, rolling Tuscan hills. He was a poet-reading butcher who blasted hard rock and roll. And that’s the point. Taste is stretched, expanded and reimagined in the disruption, the most unlikely of pairings, rebellion.
The more we invite and accept, embrace and allow for Taste’s contortion, the more we fill up each other’s wine glasses, thunderstruck.
