jonny's blog

After the fire at UFC Kitchen Scott and Drew of Art & Sons designed a poster designed from the cast iron Wisconsin pan. We really like the image and the money we raised from the posters helped us cover our immediate bills and pay our staff. Art & Sons have done another small printing of the posters and we have some for sale on our site and we will ship them to people. The money from these prints will go towards helping us rebuild our restaurant. We can ship these anywhere in the US .

Sarah worked at Underground Food Collective just over a year and left quite a mark.  When she approached us about coming in to learn how to butcher we offered her a job on the spot. She had worked at two of our favorite farms (Jones Valley and Driftless Organic)  and immediately fit in. We were always impressed by how quickly Sarah picked up on things, especially for someone who had never worked in a kitchen before.

This morning a fire broke in the building we lease from at 127 e. mifflin. At this point we have no information about the cause, extent of the damage or a timetable for when we will be able to reopen. While this is a huge blow to the collective we are keeping our heads high and are very relieved that no one was hurt and that no other properties sustained substantial damage from the fire.

We have been overwhelmed by the community support and the goodwill that has been sent our way. We would like to remind people that our catering operation and our meat processing business are still operating (in a seperate space) and support of these businesses will be huge in our move forward after this fire.

Photo by Corinne Stoll

Underground Meats is very happy to announce a line of dry cured salami and and whole muscle cured meats. We have been doing some limited sales for sometime as well as the Meat CSA but we now have a line of products that we feel confident about suppling to area grocery stores and restaurants. Soon, we will also be offering retail meats at our restaurant.

If you are interested in our products please email us at meats@undergroundfoodcollective.org. Our products are made using pasture raised pork from Wisconsin. We will begin with the following salami - saucisson sec (a traditional French sausage with fresh herbs and garlic), Wisconsin style pepperone (lots of spice and a beef, pork mix), chorizo (classic dried Spanish sausage), soppressata (southern Italian with garlic, spices and wine), Tuscan salami (simple, salt, pepper and pork). Along with the sausages we will be doing special releases of whole muscles cuts including, tesa, pancetta, coppa, lomo and dry cured hams. Give us a holler if you are interested and we can talk tasty meat treats.

photo - emily julka

Chris Hynes is a wonderful photographer who shares our building with us. She approached us about doing a group photo with Underground Meats. We were set to receive 9 mulefoot pigs from Shady Blue Acres. We decided that this was a good time to do it. We had quite the crew in that day and it was a lot of work but now most of the product is in cure or sent out in our CSA.