Casablanca Meat Market

After no more access to Giunta’s Meat Farms, I figured my days of getting cut chicken the way I wanted it were over unless I went to Fairway. This place is even better than Meat Farms since it’s got just about any kind of meat you can imagine. The line gets long but the staff is great, will get your meat as you want it & they even accept credit cards. They also have a seating area so you can wait on your order without being another person standing in the counter. It’s a meat lover’s dream come true & if you’ve got a lot of company to feed, you can do so at a very good price. Definitely my new place for chicken.

Love this place for my fresh meats. The staff is always very nice and helpful. I would personally avoid during the first and 15^th of the month because this place gets extra packed.

what a fantastic place! clean, friendly and helpful. i just wish they had more lamb options!

The best meat market in NYC.
Run by an Argentinian family that lives, breathes, and eats butchery. The wait line can be epic depending on when you come in.
The meat is beyond fresh. They will offer to cut it up however you need it. I’ve bought chicken breast and had them flatten it for paillard, osso bucco, lamb shank…
The place smells so fresh. They speak Spanish, English and whatever. It’s a proper butcher.
Places like Harlem Shambles flaunt organic, grass fed, aged — in fact for years I bought half a side of grass fed beef from Vermont — the quality and freshness of Casablanca is incomparable.
I’m beyond grateful places like this still exist.

It’s the best I only get my meat at this place, it’s fresh meat daily great prices plenty staff the owner is invested in the community and his son’s are are inheriting a great business, been going for years and I buy in bulk

My mother and I have been planning on Christmas dinner since November. The traditional Christmas menu, pernil (roast pork shoulder), arroz con gandules, pasteles, baked mac n cheese etc etc. We finally get to Casa Blanca about a week before christmas so she can purchase the pork shoulder which she was going to roast and a second pork shoulder which she uses to cut up to make the pasteles. A butcher was very persistent so that my mother can purchase a «specific» pork shoulder, which she finally gave in. On Christmas eve, she placed one of the pernils in the oven already seasoned so it can slowly cook for about 5 – 6 hours. As two hours go by, I begin to smell a horrible stench as if it was rotten meat cooking. We opened the oven and pulled the shoulder out and everything looked fine. To our surprise when we thought it was cooked we saw that the inside of the shoulder was dark, and so was the bone. It looked just as bad as it smelled. So HELL no, I will not be buying from there EVER AGAIN!!!

This place is intense. When I walked in I was immediately confused by the whole situation and quickly called the friend who recommended it. He told me that I needed to go to the far right if I was only getting a couple of things that I didn’t need a number and I could just go over towards the ‘2 items express’ area. Fine. We waited on a little line that had formed and when it was our turn, we ordered a pound of sweet chorizo and a pound of spicy chorizo. This came out to just $ 6.88. That almost the same price for those tiny little goya ones you get at the supermarket! The guy told me that he’d bring us our stuff on the other side. Luckily, my friend told us that everyone tips these guys about a dollar, so we did the same.
Cooked the chorizo immediately for some burritos. The spicy one had a nice, smoky, paprika-​y flavor, but I preferred the sweet one because the spicy one washed out all the other flavors of the burrito.

Yup…5 stars. It’s that good. We moved to east harlem expecting to immerse ourselves in food heaven… boy were we wrong. Few and far between good restaurants… FORGET about buying meat at Met Grocer or any place else unless you want to eat bacteria.
THE HEAVENS opened when we discovered Casablanca Meat Market.
The owners are the BEST… young but old school love and respect for their market and the people in the neighborhood.
Not sure if I’ve EVER bought meat this fresh… and you will be blown away at the prices… I mean I thought they made a mistake first time I was there.
I won’t buy meat any place else. If you want ground meat ask them to grind sirloin… it’s no more expensive than reg chuck store bought… and it’s flavor is just out of this world.
My grandfather owned Loria Meat Market in Newark, NJ in the 50’s and I find real nostalgia from this place done so old school right.

I love this place, crowded and all great staff awesome cuts and reasonable prices, and even though they don’t have meat plans if you know how to budget your money you can figure out your own plan AAAA++++++ in my book

I’ve been a in da ghetto in El Barrio since 2006 and was turning vegetarian. However, the discovery of Casablanca Carneceria ruined my vegan plan and kept me a carnivore still to this day.
Casablanca is a mom and pop store with an Argentinian owner and his sons running the place since 1950s. The store was first a small ho in da wall, and expanded to twice larger store front around 2008. This meat market is the go-​to place for local fire engines and the families in the hood. Store is usually packed with families and lines of customers. Service may be a bit slow on a busy day (read: any major holidays of US, Puerto Rican and Dominican, plus inclement weather forecast, all seasons) but quality is what stood the test of time, and as a closeted vegetarian I cannot think of any meat store which consistently meet the expectation of quality fresh produce.
Freshness and cleanliness. Every morning a truck from Boar’s head and a truck bearing Casablanca’s name delivers fresh meat to the market at 6am. The staff loaded the meat and off they go. No matter how busy the business were, it remained clean and organized. At the end of the day the wooden cutting boards were all scrubbed down and a layer of wood chipped off the cutting surface for sanitation. During the historical super storm «Sandy» in 2012, the store was opened on Monday and Tuesday when the entire NYC was flooded and trains shutdown. One of the son living closest to the store opened the store and sold the limited amount of meat remaining on the shelves due to delivery truck not being able to enter the city. (Bridges and tunnels were flooded and shutdown.) I have purchased meat consistently from Casablanca, and I never worry if I’d get sick eating their produce.
Customization. The guys behind the counters are artists in sculpting meat so perfect that it is quite a treat to watch them work. They will slice your chicken breast to the perfect thickness of your desire, the way you like it and the size you specify. They chop bones and joins all with proficiency and speed. Recently there are more English speaking staff — in addition to Chris, Sal, Mark, Luis, and Freddy — so the non Spanish speaking customers can be better served.
Professionalism. The store opens and closes as advertised. Although, if you REALLY want your meat and came at 6:31pm, the store owner would still let you in just because he understand the need of feeding the family and having that simple and basic need met by a trustful source.
The staff are really friendly and helpful. They accept all credit cards EXCEPT AMEX starting Dec 2012. They will carry your produce to your car or up the stairs if you’ve got a handful. I highly recommend stepping in and trying out meat you’ve meant to try. Just ask any staff behind the counter and they can give you new ideas on how to cook a certain meat.

If you’re wondering why it’s so crowded there, it’s because their meats are vastly — and visibly — fresher than anything you can get at either a smaller local supermarket or even a larger or gourmet supermarket.
They’re also quite reasonably priced — not merely reasonable for the quality of product, but reasonable overall.
They have a wide variety the «usual suspects» — endless cuts of beef, pork and chicken, in addition to fresh sausages, bacon (even beef bacon), dried fish and a full line of Boar’s Head and other prepared meats — as well as some of the more exotic fare — rabbit, duck, goose and goat, for example (for the record, we had some of the rabbit, and it was delicious).
These guys know their meat, will grind or butcher to specification (it isn’t uncommon to see them expertly butterflying filets), and if you know when to get there, you can beat the crowds with ease (1 hour before closing is best, though if you’re only getting one or two things, you can bypass the «take a number» system and use the express line).
Go there once instead of the grocery. You’ll be an instant repeat customer.

It is nice to have a decent butcher near me. The service is great and the cuts of meat I got were delicious, but there selection of beef cuts was rather limited compared to other butchers I have been to.

I live in the area and as you know there are not too many supermarkets with fresh meat. This place has all cuts of pork, beef, chicken, cold cuts, sausage — what you normally find at a butcher. It reminds me of the old Jewish and Italian butchers in Kensington Market when i use to live in Toronto. Noisy and crowded smelling of blood and fat with sawdust on the floor. Service is great if you speak Spanish as they have 20 guys behind the counter serving up the meat anyway you want it.
Pros: Fresh quality meat.
Cons: Long lines at peak hours not organic.