All Natural Meats and Sustainable Seafood at Dino!

Chef / Owner Dean Gold is pleased to say that Dino sources all of its meats and seafood from all natural and sustainable sources.

Dupont Farmer's Market

Every Sunday you can find me with my trusty green flat dolly buying boxed of produce from Heintz at Next Step Produce and Zach of Tree & Leaf.  I show up, they tell me what they have a lot of and I buy.  Then I have to rewrite the menu!  Both are certified organic and they are defintely family run operations.  They are very stimulating to my cooking style as I know that what I am buying is fresh and in peak condition.  This is how I wish I could buy all my produce: face to face with the dedicated grower! 

 

Tuscarora Organic Growers Coop

This is a group of farms in a 6 county area in Pennsylvania’s Juniata River Valley, located about 2 hours north of DC. Over 25 farms own and jointly operate TOG. By buying our produce from 25 farms that have banded together, we get all the individual grower’s products on one truck. This results in less delivery cost and less impact on the environment, and more profits to the farmers. Twice each week (more often as the growing season progresses) we receive a list of available product. We then place our order and then the growers deliver their produce to the TOG facility (located on one of the member farms) and as much of our order as is available is shipped. I believe in TOG as it has what I think are the best tomatoes and herbs available to us. By dealing with the coop, we may order from 5 to 10 or more farms at a time and only have one truck make one delivery, another benefit.  That truck also carries our conventional produce and all natural hormone free milk, thus reducing the carbon footprint of our deliveries even further. 

Vande Rose Farms

We get our pork and most of our beef from Vande Rose Farms in Iowa. They are a family run group of farms, with three families, Van Gilst, De Bruin and Rozenboom, which have been farming together for over 100 years. They produce Hereford Beef and Duroc Pork. Their meats are all natural, fed grains and grasses grown on the family farm. They use a local Iowa processor that uses the most humane practices in the processing of the animals.

Vande Rose Duroc Pork

The Duroc breed was found in testing in the 1990’s to be one of the most desirable breeds of pork in terms of taste and issues of size and ease of growing. We have tasted many breeds of pork and we find the Duroc to be best. It has a richer flavor and darker color than the other pork we have tried. Vande Rose farms their pigs with emphasis on humane handling that minimizes stress on the animal. This actually results in a healthier animal with better flavor. The cost is higher than factory pork farming, but the results speak for themselves.

 

Salumeria Biellese

This is a small family owned salami producer in New York. They make their sausages in the basement of their original store at 28^th and 8th Ave in Manhattan and then transport them to New Jersey for aging and finishing. They do not as a rule use nitrates in their products except what is required by their USDA inspectors. They use Berkshire Black pigs for all their products.

Berkshire Black Pork

Berkshire black pigs are an heirloom strain of pig. Most commercial pig today is a white breed selected for its low fat content (i.e. “The other white meat”). In doing so, all of the flavor has been bred out of the meat. The Berkshire Black strain is a traditional British hog that grows more slowly and more flavorfully then industrial farmed pigs. The color is darker with less marbling and more intramuscular fat (i.e. cover and membranes). The result is succulent pork that is juicy and flavorful. Ours is grown in an ecological sensitive fashion as well. The Berkshire Black is the only pig used by Salumeria Biellese which produces all our sausages and salumi.

 

MBA Smart Chickens

This is a network of farms in Nebraska. The farms raise the chickens in agreement with protocols set by MBA, the owners of the Smart chicken brand. MBA uses the European Air chill system for processing their chicken. This results in high quality and better flavored chicken.

When the chicken is processed, it is at 90 degrees. The chicken is plucked and eviscerated. The FDA requires that within 2 hours, the bird is lowered to below 50 degrees and to less and 40 degrees within 4 hours. Most producers use a water bath, where 100’s or even 100’s of birds are dumped into a large vat of chlorinated water to chill. If there is any fecal matter left from the evisceration all the birds in the vat are then cross contaminated. This is the source of much of the Salmonella that is found in raw chicken. In addition, the FDA allows up to 12% water gain in the birds, so this process will result in chicken that is typically 8 to 12% chlorinated water.

MBA puts its bird onto a conveyor system that allows them to hang and chills them by sending them thru a chilled room with fast moving air blowing thru it. Since the birds are not water bathed or sprayed with water, they do not gain water weight nor is there a chance for cross contamination. The result is a bird that has all the natural flavor from its 100% grain feeding gives it. We do not brine or season the birds prior to cooking (aside from salt & pepper, yet we are told almost daily that our chicken is “the best tasting chicken” the customer has had. Good food does not need covering up.

Other so called air chilled birds (such as the Gianone bird that many fine restaurants use) are actually processed with sprayed water as well as cold air, resulting in a middle ground bird.

 

D’Artagnan

D’Artagnan is a specialty distributor of meat products. Their product line is all natural with no products sold that are raised using hormones or antibiotics. They source from a network of small producers and distribute all over the country to some of the top restaurant in the country. We buy our wild boar from them. They are also the source of a lot of our specials such as rabbit & poussin (young chicken).

 D'Artagnan also now supplies us with all our veal.  This is a humanely raised veal from male holstein {dairy} calves.  They are raised in large houses with plenaty of room to move around and engage in calf social behavior (Moo Tube and Twitter, I am sure}.  They are fed only milk and recieve no antibiotics, hormones or other growth stimulants.  They are raised on a cooperative of small farms inNew York.

D'Artagnan also is a distributor of mushrooms and we source some wild (foraged) mushrooms (St George, chanterelles etc) and buy a lot of their cultivated exotic mushrooms (hon shimeji, nameko, velvet piopini, royal trumpet, beech etc). What most folk think of as wild mushrooms are actually cultivated exotic mushrooms. They started out as wild mushrooms, but now are grown in controlled conditions in Pennsylvania or California (typically). This allows for a continuous supply and allows for selection for better flavor and texture. We roast or grill our mushrooms separately by variety, and then assemble the final dish.

Sustainable Seafood

We try to source our fish only from sustainable fisheries. Sustainable is a tricky concept, but to me personally it is far more important than organic or natural. To be sustainable, farming or fishing practice must be designed to last forever. Practically, many concepts of sustainable are posed as designed to last 100 years. 

The National Marine Fisheries Service studies fisheries and identifies concerns with the current population size, fishing methods used and wether a population is historicall over fished and is it currently being overfished.  It is important to support good fishing practices and well managed fisheries.  In some cases, a fish that has been overfished in the past is now well managed and is on the road to recovery.  We will but these fish in order to support the economic health of the fishing industry and reward responsible behovior in that fishery.  If we don't, the fishermen will just catch something else without a management plan. 

Right now there are several fisheries (i.e. King Salmon on the Sacramento and Oregon rivers) that are in dangerous collapse right now. No one knows why this happened, but the fisheries were over fished and so even if it is a natural phenomenon, the populations were relatively low to begin with. Now they may be gone. Only time will tell.

Quinault Pride Sturgeon & Salmon

The Quinault Nation fishes for salmon & sturgeon on the Olympia peninsula in Washington state. This is the only healthy source of these two fish in Washington State.

Marine Stewardship Council

Marine Stewardship council – this is a seafood based group that has developed a model of sustainable fisheries. All the fishermen in the area must sign on to the agreement (or the fishery must meet the strict standards, year by year) with the member processors and the non member processors catch. This is crucial, to have a MSC certification, the entire fishery must be healthy. MSC sets catch limits each year according to current conditions. This is the best certification out there. All our Alaskan fish meets MSC certification.

 Prime Seafood & “Sailfish Jim”

Prime Seafood is a local company that arranges to fly in fresh fish from sustainable waters around the world. Jim Chambers is the man behind the operation. Twine each week he contacts us with the fish he has available on the next delivery date. This order is taken before the fish are even caught! They are based on what is running at the time and what he can get his producers to commit to providing, but since the fish is not in the boat, it may or may not show up. His main area right now is are fisheries from Alaska that are Marine Stewardship Council certified. MSC certification is very important, as it is 3^rd party certification. They look at the long term health of a fishery as their standard. Jim usually has, in season, Sablefish, Halibut, Lingcod, King Salmon & Ivory King Salmon.

 Farmed seafood

Some farmed seafood is a fantastic alternative to wild caught, but some is an ecological horror. It all depends on the farming practices. Fish penned in giant nets close to shore where they are fed chemical & hormone & antibiotic laden feeds are disruptive to native populations and also produce huge waste product problems (as the book title indicates, everyone poops!). Other methods, open ocean or lagoon penning, minimizes these problems. Some fish are hatched and then allowed to swim freely and then trapped when they return to their spawning grounds. These methods are far less impact and we prefer them. Our Branzino is farmed from Greek, Spanish or Italian waters. The EU is promoting good farm management practices so we continue to support these efforts.  We never use Salmon that is farmed.

Dino does not serve Bluefin Tuna, Eastern Water Cod or Skate, Eastern Water Monkfish or Chessapeake crab.  These fish are just overfished or fished in irresponsible manners.  We wish other restauranteurs who seem to care about the environment would stop using these fish and let the populations rebuild.