Nestled within the River Street Marketplace in San Juan Capistrano, the Market by the Meat Cellar offers a comprehensive pit stop for food enthusiasts, serving as a hub for a variety of needs. Opening at the tail end of 2024, the venue combines a traditional butchery, a choice cheese shop, a culinary boutique and a full-service steakhouse. Beyond its daily offerings, the Meat Cellar hosts a monthly “Meat Master Class” series, presenting a multicourse dinner led by its expert in all things carnivorous.
Anthony Villegas, the charismatic meat master and co-founder of the Market by the Meat Cellar (which he founded alongside his wife, Sara) leads the dinner series. The new series not only offers guests a gastronomically-heightened dining experience for $250, but also an education. “We show you how to prepare the meals, how to take things home and cook them, and how simple, very good ingredients just need simple treatments,” he said.
The dinner series, which first started at the couple’s first Market by the Meat Cellar in Claremont, seats roughly 35 to 40 guests who gather at a handful of dining tables in front of a large screen with Villegas taking center stage. “We do a full demo of each course, and then it’s sent back to the kitchen and prepared for our guests,” he explained in a phone interview. “You get step-by-step instructions on how to make the sauces and the proteins, learn where the meat comes from and the method we’re preparing it.”
During a visit to the San Juan Capistrano location’s second “Meat Master Class” on April 14, the roughly four-hour dinner featured eight courses, with each dish, save a phenomenal chocolate bread pudding kicker, prepared by Villegas in front of a butcher block and stove with a screen behind him allowing for maximum viewing.
The first course, “Cheese School,” a thoughtful cheese plate prepared by head cheesemonger Kendric Antonio, featured a gouda, Spanish olives, duck prosciutto, goat cheese, a mimolette (a French cow’s milk described as “somewhere between gouda and cheddar”) and honeycomb candy.
A soft shell crab sandwich served on a brioche bun with Meyer lemon aioli and calamansi vinaigrette salad, the second course, had Villegas beer battering and gently frying the succulent crustacean as servers bring guests their own. A lobster poached in Grand Marnier butter, for course three, came accompanied by a glass of Sinegal Estate sauvignon blanc, a perfect pairing for any Neptunian meat.
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Moving onto land-based fare, the fourth course proved to be the stunner of the night, a steamed Wagyu beef cheek taco served with avocado chimichurri and lemon picked red onion, a hat tip to Mexico, where Villegas was born and raised. “It’s a rough piece of meat so you want to put a good amount of salt on it,” he said while going table to table showing off the raw cheek so diners could get a closer look.
The taco was followed by a veal schnitzel, pounded flat and soaked in buttermilk, dusted with flour and panko breadcrumbs and then fried to golden-hued crispness. The finished schnitzel, laced with a potent demi-glace, came with sauteed fingerling potatoes. (In between discussing cooking and preparation methods, Villegas peppers his conversation with interesting facts; did you know most veal meat comes from male dairy calves? Well, I didn’t. As he explained, they’re not needed for breeding in the dairy industry.)
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The next two courses, a spring lamb and a bison strip loin, provided the heartiest moments of the evening, with the former being sous vide for six hours, resulting in an exceedingly tender dish. (Bonus points for the scattering of lamb cracklings.) The latter succeeds in preparing the infamously lean meat with heightened flavor care of a slightly sweet blackberry veal demi.
As the dinner continues, guests are served glasses of wine, sparkling or otherwise, to pair with each dish. Villegas’s sister, Sonya Villegas Kelsen, co-owner of Colony Wine Merchant in Anaheim, helped lead wine selection and pourings. “I think of wine as the perfect agricultural product,” she told the crowd.
Due to an alcohol allergy, I couldn’t imbibe any-proof libations. The Market by the Meat Cellar seamlessly swapped my wine for alcohol-free drinks found on the mocktail menu. (I opted for a Shirley Temple with housemade grenadine and the White Linen made with elderflower tonic, mint, cucumber and soda). Such seemingly small attention to detail turned an already chipper night into a unforgettable one — literally.
At the end of the dinner, Villegas told his audience that most of the recipes are also available on the Meat Cellar’s website, allowing us to try them at home.
More than just an indulgence, the new dinner-class series at the Market by the Meat Cellar serves as an oral treatise on the meat industry. “People buy meat without knowing the living conditions,” Villegas explained. “Large companies, the big meat producers out there, they don’t really own any cattle themselves…they usually farm it out and buy whatever is the cheapest on the market.”
In contrast, the Meat Cellar sources from smaller farms, emphasizing quality — an ethos reflected in his simple philosophy: “It’s hard to (mess) up food if you keep it simple, he declared during dinner. “Just let the protein, starch or vegetable come through.”
The next Meat Master Class is slated for Monday, June 16. For more information, call the restaurant at 949-503-1548.