A weekend of butchery at the beach

When a couple is composed of one beach lover and one who sunburns easily, a vacation by the ocean needs something more than comfy lounge chairs. Not too long after the United States invaded Grenada, for example, my military-historian husband mapped out a trip to the island. He provided diagrams and battle synopses as in-flight reading material, and we stayed in a hotel that was a sandy stroll from where American medical students had been rescued in 1983.

So when we got the chance to spend a winter weekend on the Outer Banks, witness artisanal butchering and eat the results, my farm-to-table interest was piqued. It was another perfect union of relaxation and education, I reckoned.

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( Photo by Bonnie S Benwick TWP / Bonnie S. Benwick / The Washington Post ) - Butcher Frank Meusel snaps a freshly smoked pork hot dog at the Weeping Radish’s Meet Your Meat class in Jarvisburg, N.C.

More on this Story

• Butchery at the beach
• Details: If you go to the Outer Banks

Or payback.

The butchery class is called Meet Your Meat, I read to him on the drive down. We get two nights at the Sanderling Resort and Spa in Duck, N.C.; a workshop with local, organic beef and pork; lunch and a dress-up dinner. I couldn’t quite imagine what “hands-on” could mean. My husband was thinking: nap, with a possible excursion to Kitty Hawk.

The evening before the all-day Saturday program, we checked out the resort. The inn property is immaculate and low-key at this time of year. Accommodations are gracious, offering views of both Currituck Sound and the ocean. The spa isn’t the fanciest I’ve seen, but it did offer a treatment I’d never had: a full-length, horizontal, multi-headed shower. The technician swung it into place several feet above the table where I lay face down after hydrotherapy and an herbal salt scrub ($160). An hour of all that certainly erased memories of the hassle of heading southbound on Interstate 95.

The class was held at the Weeping Radish, a farm/brewery/pub/smokehouse/organic meat processor in Jarvisburg, about 22 miles from the resort. From the outside, the Radish is a muraled metal warehouse with a gravel parking lot, goats and vegetable beds out front.

Founder Uli Bennewitz, the brains behind this Meet Your Meat, was away for the day, so his 25-year-old daughter, Sophie, stood in as host. She had facts and costs at her fingertips and didn’t hesitate to explain the difference between mass-produced hot dogs and the dozens made each day at the Radish. (Tip: Avoid eating anything from a package that lists “mechanically separated meat” among its ingredients.)

When Uli Bennewitz opened his original Weeping Radish in Manteo, N.C., in 1986, it was one of the country’s first microbreweries — and perhaps the first to house a pub on the premises. Bennewitz came to the United States from Germany to manage farmland for foreign investors more than a few decades ago and soon began to strategize about transplanting his native food and beer culture. His butcher-in-residence operation encapsulates those efforts. He is revealing the farm-to-fork experience to food professionals and anyone else who’s interested.

The five of us were shuffled into “the cold room” (about 55 degrees; next time, I’ll take them up on the offer of a jacket) where 53-year-old German master butcher Frank Meusel and his assistant butcher, Maria Griffin, were waiting in knee-length white coats. It soon became clear that Griffin would be interpreting for Meusel, whose English is limited. It didn’t take long, though, before we thought we understood at least half of what he was saying.