Aroostook County, at 6,453 square miles, covers an area greater than the combined size of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

To locals, it’s simply known as “the County,” and as home to a rather modest population of just over 70,000 people.  It’s the largest county east of the Mississippi River.  And it takes a long time to drive through it: you can drive for eight hours, and still be in Maine.

If you’ve ever wished you could hop in your pickup truck, drive all over the state, and purvey your own goods, you should know about our relationship with Crown O’ Maine.  When Jim Cook and Kate Simonds decided to move their family to Aroostook County and start growing potatoes (and eventually root crops) and driving them by van down to Portland and Boston, they started connecting with other local farmers in Maine to meet the demand these cities’ and their restaurants provided.  Crown O’ Maine co-op was born.  Crown O’ Maine drives all over the County and all over Maine to get to the tiny places other people can’t.  They have the long-standing relationships with farmers up there.

Today, what started out in a small van and a few acres of land has turned into a business that supports some really important things we care about:

1. Being the link between the farm and the chef: COM enables farmers to spend less time worrying about distribution and more time farming.  A lot of smaller farms simply don’t have the resources to buy trucks and lose a few days per week to distribution.  We are able to reach small farms in far-off places others aren’t.

2. Being the buyer: SFB focuses on only buying for high-end restaurants means we do one thing, and do it well: being super picky about what we receive and send out.  We are dedicated to building good relationships with the farms we buy from.  These long-standing relationships allow us to buy the best of the lot, and be incredibly picky about what we accept.  We plan so that what we are sending you today belongs on the plate tonight.

   Together, we make a great team that puts real farm-to-table food, on the table, at the best restaurants in Greater Boston.

Today, Crown O’Maine has grown far beyond the family – 5 employee owners, 200 farmers and food producers, farms in every corner of Maine – this company certainly moves more than just food.  When you buy from Crown O’Maine, you bring the wealth and talent of Boston’s best tables and share it with Maine’s hardworking family farmers.  In return, Maine farmers are doing what they do best – grow!

Paul Hatz, a passionate Greek native who has worked with food his entire life, now direct-imports hand-picked Greek products from his friends and neighbors in Greece.

Eleones olive oil comes from a place on earth that very few people have access to. Mount Athos, considered one of the holiest places on earth, is also a world heritage site and autonomous polity under the rule of the Orthodox church.  Paul Hatz, of Extra Virgin Foods, direct imports olive oil grown and pressed on a tiny 32-acre farm that belongs to his cousin there.  Sharing a name with the peninsula on which they’re grown, the Halkidiki olive doesn’t yield much oil—it takes 10 kilos of olives to make one kilo of olive oil.  Therefore, this low-yield olive typically gets brined for eating, not pressed into oil.  But it makes an exceptional-tasting oil:  the rugged, seaside climate of Mt. Athos, combined with the fertile, relatively untouched Mediterranean soil creates conditions for this olive that are unparalleled elsewhere.

After harvesting, these olives must be rushed to the mill to press while they’re still vibrant and bright.  However, the Byzantine landscape means that there’s no such thing as roads to travel on—so they load up animals to carry the olives to the sea to waiting boats, to then continue on to the mill.

Greek Cheeses:

First, the obvious: Feta, as in—real feta—can only be made in certain regions in Greece, from Greek sheep’s milk, according to the EU.  This is the real deal (as opposed to the many feta-style cheeses that abound elsewhere.) Comes brine-packed in 9lb tins.  An excellent, briny well-balanced cheese.

Sfela, the lesser-known but seriously cool cousin to halloumi, means “fire-roasted” in Greek, and that refers to the whey being cooked in barrels over an open fire.  If feta and halloumi had a love child, this would be it.  Sold by the 9lb case.

Kefelatori, a hard pecorino-style sheep’s milk cheese, can be used much in the same way that pecorino is—shaved into a salad, paired with braised lamb, and so on.  Comes by the wheel, approx. 6# each.

Graveira, a Gruyere-like cheese that’s also made from sheep’s milk, has good fondue-like melting qualities, or used anywhere else like you would an alpine cheese with a brinier, saltier presence.  Comes by the wheel, approx. 6# each.

Olives, Oils, Peppers & Figs:

Olympiana Early Harvest Olive Oil:  In Paul’s words,

“first and foremost we are olive oil lovers, and it is the mainstay of our business. We are intimately involved in the production, harvesting, and selection of our oils, focusing on offering the very best oils that our family and neighbors in our village of Androussajust outside Kalamata produce.”

Fruity, grassy, and bold, with a peppery kick at the end.  Awesome—house favorite.  Offered in 3ltr jugs, and cases of six 3ltr jugs.

Eleones Olive Oil:  see above.  Comes in 3ltr jugs, cases of four 3ltr jugs, or 500ml bottles, great to use as a finishing oil, for bread service,

Kalamata Olives, from the same groves used to produce the Olympiana Olive Oil, are available in large and jumbo, pitted and unpitted, in gallons.  Barrels of whole colossal-sized kalamatas are also available by pre-order.  Please, let us know what you’d prefer when ordering.

Florina Peppers, aka Roasted Bullhorn Peppers, from Macedonia, are classically stuffed with whipped feta, broiled, and paired with ouzo for a snack.  This meaty pepper is a cool alternative to piquillo or roasted red peppers, great for small plate-size snacks, and comes roasted and packed in oil, salt and vinegar.

Kimi Figs are intact, large, moist, plump white figs.  These are hand-packed and could be used whole after plumping them, turned into white fig & sherry mostarda, white fig & walnut salami, or any other place where you’d use figs.  Also a good alternative, both flavor and size-wize, for medjool dates, such as fig toffee pudding.   These are significantly larger and nicer than most commercially dried figs.  They are sundried, hand-packed, and not treated with any preservatives.  Also, they are significantly moister than most dried fruit.

R.C. Nueske, using a recipe brought over from Prussia in the late 1800’s, started making and selling bacon and sausages to folks in the northwoods of Wisconsin as a side hustle during the Great Depression.

Called by R.W. Apple “the holy grail of bacon“, and mentioned in over 100 cookbooks as well as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, ” Nueske’s bacon is a bit different from some of the other bacons (even excellent ones) you might be used to.  The family, now in their 3rd generation of business, has protected the integrity of their product by refusing to compromise or change the methods they’ve spent so long perfecting.

What makes Nueske’s special?

The Smoke:  most applewood-smoked bacon is done for 4-6 hours, with sawdust providing the smoke.  Nueske has one person source all of their applewood trees, and cut those trees into logs–not chips, not chunks, but single-source logs that they use to smoke the bacon for 24 hours in small batches in sixteen steel-lined concrete block smokehouses.  You know, details.

The Pig:  Over the years, Nueske’s has developed relationships with local family farms who supply them with pork bellies from Belgian Pietrain pigs, fed a diet heavy in barley, to yield the meat they’re after: a good balance between lean and fat, rather than just the uber-fatty varieties that many producers of lux bacon use.  The reason? That, combined with the long smoke over coals, renders the bellies a deep ruddy color and renders off a fair bit of the fat.  Most bacons, when rendered, will yield a quarter to a third of their original weight.  Nueske’s will yield almost three quarters.  Big difference in your lardons.

The Flavor: that’s right, with a capital F.  It’s got more going on in a little lardon than most bacon has going on in a whole slice.  The smoke is rich, deep and well-balanced.  In chowder, it would lend backbone to the soup overall, as well as a nice, chewy lardon that is part of the textural joy of eating chowder in the first place.  It would make a wedge salad, especially with one of the many killer blue cheeses we have.  If you’re thinking of doing a BLT soon, now that tomato season is here, this is the bacon you want–it stands on its own and would make it unforgettable.

But I don’t need a whole slab: You can use up every little scrap of it in your beans and braises and stews, you get mad bang for your buck because it shrinks so little and adds so much flavor, it keeps for ages, there’s no big weird fatty wiggly piece at the end that you can’t use. It works as a moisturizer and eye mask as well.

Comes by the slab. They average 12#/slab. Call me maybe?

River Rock Farm, located in picturesque southern MA, epitomizes the ideal grassy landscape for raising some happy cows. No antibiotics or growth stimulants to be seen here, just some beasts roaming around the paddock with trees for shade and room to spread out. As if that weren’t enough, the meat from these fine animals is dry-aged anywhere from 25-32 days. Happy cows + dry-aging = seriously flavorful beef.

We recently spoke with Charlie Sayer at River Rock Farm to get some insight into why you should check out his product, and what makes it so damn delicious.

SFB: What makes your product different than others?

Charlie: There are more and more grass-fed farms and Mom ‘n Pop operations out there now than at any other time in modern agriculture as awareness has grown about big beef, big Ag, and CAFO beef. With that said, there is a lot of diversity even within the local movement. We pride ourselves on putting out a consistent product that is as reliable as nature allows. Every steer finishes with slightly different proportions, but the consistency of the diet and the aging process allows us to offer the best beef imaginable on a regular basis.

We pride ourselves on putting out a consistent product that is as reliable as nature allows.

SFB: Why is dry-aged beef better?

Charlie: Dry-aged beef is more tender and more flavorful than conventional beef, or wet-aged beef. As the beef hangs, all the moisture evaporates, concentrating the flavor. Just like a good cheese, as the outer layer breaks down and goes to mold, what is left on the inside is more tender after the enzymatic reaction has occurred. It is an old fashioned method, and we lose a significant amount of weight in the process, but you can taste the difference in every cut.

SFB: Which items in particular are dry-aged?

Charlie: After we harvest the animal, we age the whole beef by the side. The carcass is split and hung for 25 to 32 days (in alternating weeks), and then custom butchered to order. This allows for everything to be aged, from trim and ground beef all the way up to the tenderloin.

SFB: Why did you decide to go into this business?

Charlie: I got into the business with a passion for food, a love of working outside, and mostly to honor an old friend. Jon Konove started this farm back in the ’90’s after we volunteered together at the Heifer Project International in Arkansas. He decided to throw some animals on his parents’ land in Central Mass and put up a few fences. He invited me out to work for him and his Dad, Ron, and we built the first post and beam fences in 1996. He kept on building fences, adding animals, and building a business all through college and then took it on full time after he graduated. Meanwhile, I moved to Colorado where I was managing a sales team in Breckenridge for a family run hotel and resort.

Tragically, Jon died in a car wreck in ’08. It was devastating for everyone who knew him. The farm carried on under new management with his father, Ron, carrying the torch. Some years later, the farm needed some revival so my wife and I moved back from Colorado to take over the farm, buy out the family, and keep Jon’s torch burning. Not without our fair share of challenges, things are going great here and the future looks bright.

SFB: Is there anything about your product that you wish more people knew?

Charlie: I think it is important to know that we have antibiotic and hormone free, dry-aged beef. There aren’t too many competitors in that category, and certainly not at our prices.

SFB: What kind of cows do you have?

Charlie: We use mostly Simmental and Angus cows, but we will buy most kinds of beef cattle, as long as they are eaters with good shape and good prospect.

One week pre-order for all cuts needed. Order will arrive on Friday.

Available Cuts

Top Sirloin
Chuck
Eye Round
Brisket
Short Ribs
Bottom Round
Ground Beef

Questions about ordering River Rock? Call us (617.427.3200) and ask to speak to Tomas.

Photos courtesy of River Rock Farm