Once a Month, This Brooklyn Restaurant Flips to a Butcher Class

Once a Month, This Brooklyn Restaurant Flips to a Butcher Class

Pushing sustainability when the economy makes it a challenge.

Leland opened in 2020, serving Mediterranean cuisine with breads baked in-house, and small-batch wines, spirits, and beers. In 2022, Lee and his then-fiancee Jeannette Zinno were on the Food Network series, Me or the Menu. The butchery classes came about earlier this year, with Lee and Jaranilla wanting to promote sustainability that they practice.

These days, it’s more common for actual butcher shops and culinary schools to offer butchery classes. And while Leland isn’t the first restaurant to offer a butcher demonstration in New York, it’s carrying the torch in reinforcing sustainability at a small neighborhood restaurant, something that has been less emphasized post-COVID, as prices go up, it’s harder to get staff, and independent spots struggle to make ends meet. That can mean restaurants are buying individual cuts since it’s cheaper, rather than relying on their own labor and time to break down a whole animal.

Behind the counter stands Jaranilla, the restaurant’s in-house butcher, who is prepared to teach responsible whole animal butchery. Leland says the key to a successful duck butcher class in a restaurant basement, of all places, is listening to the community.

“You make sure that people have just as much of a voice as we do,” says Lee. “We’re as much of a student — and new to this neighborhood — as anyone else.”

It’s not a hands-on process for attendees: They stand around the butcher block, watch as Jaranilla explains his meticulous process, and sample a variety of dishes the restaurant makes from just one animal.

With each class — which costs $125 per person — Jaranilla alternates between duck, pig, and tuna. This demonstrates how little goes to waste with every animal the restaurant serves. In the duck butcher class, for example, fat is saved for rendering and the bones for stocks.

During the class, the group learned that Pekins are known for their all-white feathers, are native to China, were brought to Long Island years ago, tend to be farm-raised, and now make up most of our duck consumption. Mallards, on the other hand, are wild, less fatty, and tougher to eat.

The class sips on duck consommé and munches on baked duck buns, the first two courses of the tasting menu. After Jaranilla concludes the demonstration, diners spread out among the few tables in the cellar and continue with rillettes, sisig, and Leland’s popular duck frites.

“The thing that Leland gets right about the experience is giving guests just enough of a peek behind the back of house curtains to make a case for their considered approach to dining,” says one attendee from Red Hook, Brooklyn. “But they also know when to lean back into their hospitality chops, pull up a chair, and let participants enjoy a glass of wine in hand.”

Of the classes, Lee says, “We want to continue to create something very organic, something that the community needs, [and] something that keeps our team interested.”