19 MARCH 14-20, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Breaking the Mold JUSTIN BRUNSON HAS BEEF, AND IT’S A GAME-CHANGER. BY MOLLY MARTIN “This mold is crazy,” says Justin Brunson as he opens the door to a refrigerated room at Meat Cleaver, a wild game and beef processor near the Berkeley neighborhood that’s been in business since 1976. Inside, the tempera- ture is chilly and the air smells like popcorn, with heavy nutty, funky notes. The shelves are lined with cuts of beef in varying stages of dry-aging. But unlike most dry-aged beef, this meat is covered with mold — some of it so thick and fuzzy that you can barely tell there’s beef underneath. “It’s like a cheese-aging cellar, but it’s my beef-aging cellar. Everybody that comes in here is like, ‘What the fuck are you do- ing, Brunson!? This is like a total science experiment,’” says the former chef/owner of Masterpiece Deli and Old Major, a pork- centric restaurant that was open for seven years in LoHi before shuttering during the pandemic in 2020. After that, Brunson turned his attention to another project, River Bear Meats, which he launched in 2019. But by the summer of 2022, he’d shifted gears once again, selling his stake in River Bear with plans to start fresh. “It was a perfect opportunity for me to make some money, to do my own thing, just work with myself and be my only investor,” he told Westword at the time. Free from the daily grind of restaurant life, Brunson took his time launching Brunson Meat Co., balancing research and development work on the new business with focusing on his own physical and mental health after years in the industry. He spent time fi shing, trav- eling, working out and, re- cently, getting married. Meanwhile, Brunson Meat Co. rolled out its fi rst product line: bacon. “It’s going great; we’ve just been rolling along like a little champ,” Brunson says. The product is now carried in several local restaurants, as well as grocery stores like Marczyk Fine Foods, Tony’s Market and Leevers Locavore. It’s also distributed through Royal Crest Dairy; he has hopes it will be stocked at larger grocery chains soon, too. But Brunson has another kind of meat on his mind these days. Back at home, just a few minutes from Meat Cleaver, he heats several cast-iron pans on the stove and be- gins searing a variety of steaks. The aroma that fi lls the kitchen is unlike any other — popcorny, like the dry-aging room, with a buttery sweetness. “Beef has always been a passion project for me,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do this new style of dry-aged beef, and I just never had anywhere to do it before.” But then a neighbor introduced him to Lucas Watson, who became the owner of Meat Cleaver about four years ago. “Lucas and his family gave me the space to make my dream come true.” Brunson began exper- imenting with different styles and breeds of prime Angus beef from farmers in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. “I feel like the Angus that comes out of the Corn Belt is some of the best beef in America,” he says. He inoculates the meat with three strains of mold that were gifted to him by well-known Dallas chef John Tesar, and ages it for anywhere from thirty to 120 days — the longer, the funkier. “It really increases the tenderness, the aroma and the fl avor of the beef,” Brunson explains. “Our beef tastes like popcorn and brown butter.” While both this process and traditional dry-aging make the beef more tender, “ours, with all the mold, imparts this beautiful fl avor,” he adds. It’s a fl avor that has caught the attention of local chefs: Brunson’s beef is now on the menu at Barolo, the new Hop Alley chef’s counter, Meat & Cheese Restaurant and Farm Shop in Aspen, and both Rootstalk and Radicato, the Breckenridge eateries owned by chef Matt Vawter, who is a 2024 James Beard semifi nal- ist for Best Chef, Mountain Region. “It’s awesome beef,” says Vawter. He, like the other chefs using the beef in their res- taurants, prefers the less-aged cuts — around thirty days — because the more subtle funk appeals to a wider range of guests. “There’s a story behind it, it’s a superior product, and we’re excited to have it on the menu.” Alex Seidel was one of the fi rst to taste Brunson’s early mold-aging experiments and now has the beef on the menu at his restau- rants, Fruition and Mercantile. “Knowing where he got the mold from and watching that whole process, the similarities between aging cheese. ... I’ve been curious about it for a long time, and Justin took that to the next level,” he remarks. “It’s a fl avor that you can’t reproduce. It just has a butteriness and earthiness to it that you don’t get in typical dry-aged steaks.” Brunson recently got a big new account, Mastro’s, which will begin serving the meat at its steakhouse in Scottsdale, Arizona, and potentially at all of its 21 locations across the country. “I’m super excited for all the support we’ve had from great restaurants,” he says. His passion project currently occupies three rooms at the Meat Cleaver facility that can hold around 15,000 pounds of beef — “which is small,” Brunson notes. “But we are growing very CAFE continued on page 20 FIND MORE FOOD & DRINK COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/RESTAURANTS Brunson has been mold-aging everything from wagyu to decade-old dairy cows. The mold strains impart a popcorn-like fl avor. MOLLY MARTIN MOLLY MARTIN