Butcher Kelly Kawachi’s life has been full of perfectly-timed accidents. She first mistakenly arrived in her beloved home of Colorado and later unexpectedly became a butcher. Now with seven years under her belt, Kawachi radiates enthusiasm as she talks about charcuterie, butchery demos, and the aging chamber.
Growing up surfing on the warm, sunny shores of Hawaii, Butcher Kelly Kawachi might seem like the last person to be carving cows at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Kawachi’s first encounter with Colorado was from a mix up of names. She applied to Mesa State (in Grand Junction), initially thinking it was near her cousin in Costa Mesa, California. This turned out to be a funny mistake, but she attended anyway and learned some culinary skills. Soon enough, she fell in love with Colorado.
After college, Kawachi missed home, returning to Hawaii for five years. She worked her way up at a fine dining restaurant. “I was totally into the whole back of the house, kitchen night life. The stress of the tickets, the ordering fires.” She almost even moved to New York to take her cooking to the next level, but decided she wanted to return to Colorado.
Eager to try something different, Kawachi narrowed her options down to baking and butchery, which on the surface seem dissimilar. “I wanted to stay in the culinary industry, and I wanted to move back to Colorado. I was like, ‘I like baking, and I like this salumi butchery thing. What should I do?’
That’s when she discovered Blackbelly, and under the encouragement of Chef Hosea Rosenberg, joined the team and fell in love with butchery. “As I started the first year, second year, it just was like, ‘Oh, this is actually this is probably going to be my career for the rest of my life.’ If you asked me like 10 years ago, I would never think I’d be doing this.”
Butchering meat in Colorado seems worlds away from butchering fish in Hawaii. “With fish, they're super delicate. With pork, lamb, and beef, our knives get ruined every day. They're just bigger pieces of meat. But it was also exciting for me, you get to carve out these animals. Some people might be grossed out, but I find it kind of fun. It’s an art form.”
Sourced from local farmers, Blackbelly’s lamb is unbelievably delicious, but it’s no easy task to prepare. Years of training have given Kawachi the strength to physically carry and the precision to perfectly carve a full lamb. “[For lifting], my max right now is a 90 pound lamb. I’m breathing hard, and I'm sweating. [For carving], you have to make sure your knife work is up to par, and you’re really scraping those bones and utilizing every piece of meat.”
Kawachi uses old world European practices to break down whole animals, allowing her in some cases to triple the number of steak cuts from a piece of meat. This is in stark contrast to how most grocery stores operate. She says, “If you go to a grocery store, they're gonna buy in like ten tenderloins from a cow, and that's five cows right there. So what happens to the rest of the animal? We focus on just bringing in one cow at a time. We only get two tenderloins, but that's something that we're trying to change the [customer’s] mindset of.”
Kawachi encourages customers to try lesser known cuts of meat that taste just as good. “Lamb neck is underrated. Pork, some of the shoulder cuts. And for beef, anything that's not ribeye, New York, and tenderloin is very underrated. Any other cut, like the tri-tip that I love, is so good. It may not be as tender as a tenderloin, but it’s tasty.”
It’s rare for a woman to be head butcher. Being a woman in the industry, Kawachi feels very positively about how she’s treated by her fellow butchers. She finds humor when people are surprised she leads the butchery. With a grin, she says, “It's funny when customers come up, they go to my other two butchers who are tall dudes, burly guys. And then [the butchers] are like, ‘My boss is right there.’ And [the customers] look at me, and they're just like, ‘Oh, you??’”
Her relaxed, positive personality has shaped her style of management, and it stems from her Hawaiian cultural upbringing. Kawachi explains, “I try to create a nice Aloha environment. Patience. Family is not just your blood relatives, it's everyone you meet. In the butcher shop, you have some sort of sense of urgency, but I think I have a good mix because I'm from Hawaii, learning when to stop and not get so crazy, frustrated and stressed out. I know how to just relax sometimes and that helps with decision making. I'll take a deep breath, and it's fine. We'll get there when we get there.”
And she’s gotten there. Kawachi moved from one paradise to another. Blackbelly Market sits right at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She says, “Boulder has everything you want. Our new shop has a lot more windows. Where I stand, I can look up and see The Flatirons.” Kawachi loves the granola, active culture of Colorado where she can snowboard in the winter and hike in the summer. “It’s a very outdoorsy, let’s get outside kind of scene. It's such a beautiful state.”
Hero image: Joni Schrantz/Santo
