Why I Always Send People to Meat & Company in Niskayuna

Why is this such a necessity, you might be thinking? The answer is that there are new people watching my videos and reading these blogs who are new to everything I do here at Eat Local New York. They aren’t familiar with the other 100 times I’ve said the same thing. So before I carry on with a dozen examples to prove my point, let me just repeat myself on this one matter.

There are three levels of influencers in the world, at least from what I’ve come to learn over the years. There’s the influencer who builds a following and refuses to do anything unless there’s a dollar to be made. That sounds critical, and I don’t mean it to be, but it’s how this type of influencer exists. And God bless them — they do get paid a lot. Then there’s the influencer who will gladly accept money when brands, companies, and businesses ask them to move, but who, like me, spends most of their time moving for free. And then there are influencers who just wish they could make a buck, and until they can, they’ll do everything they can for free.

I say that to say this: I did not choose to go to Meat & Company on my first visit. It was chosen for me. And man, oh man, am I happy it was, because I’m afraid I may never have discovered this restaurant on my own. There’s a chance I would have, but maybe not.

About two years ago, if memory serves me correctly, I was hired by a local tourism board. Or maybe it was a chamber of commerce? Or maybe it was a chamber of tourists? Exactly what it was doesn’t matter, but they were the people responsible for bringing more visitors to their part of New York State. They hired me to travel down to the greater Albany area and visit some of the restaurants, and then they gave me the list of four or five restaurants I’d be visiting. One of those restaurants was Meat & Company, located in Niskayuna.

Now, the story goes — yet again, if memory serves me correctly, which I think it does — that the owner of Meat & Company had begun following me on Instagram and was hoping, to some extent, that I would make my way down to Niskayuna and visit his restaurant to make a video. Around that same time, unbeknownst to him and unbeknownst to me, this chamber of tourism had hired me to go down and had selected his restaurant as one of the ones I’d visit. They gave me the list of restaurants they wanted me to go to, and I contacted each one to schedule my visit.

Pulling into the address for Meat & Company, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I didn’t know anything about them walking through the front door. I knew they were a company, and I knew they sold meat. But I didn’t know how long they’d been in business, who the owners were, the story of the restaurant, or what they served beyond meat.

That’s one of my favorite things about doing this: walking into restaurants I’ve never been to before and meeting the people responsible for making and selling the food. I’ve heard a lot of these owners’ stories over the years, and I never get tired of hearing them.

Meat & Company is located in a shopping mall. Or a strip mall? What’s the difference? I don’t know. It’s a really long building with a lot of different businesses inside. There’s a Price Chopper on one end, a liquor store, a Starbucks, and I think some sort of learning center. Anyway, I walked into Meat & Company and met Ben, the owner.

It’s a small but well-designed restaurant. You order your food at the counter, and just alongside the cash register you can see the staff selecting and carving your meat to order. If you order a portion of brisket, they pull out a whole brisket they’ve smoked in-house and carve it on thick wooden cutting boards right in front of you. There’s a window so you can watch the staff as they work. You can see the meat being carved and sliced and put onto your sandwich or your plate. You can see the juices and the seasoning. You can see the smoker, and you can see the wings being charred on the grill.

They brought me behind the counter into the kitchen to film as they prepared my food. I don’t remember everything I had that day, but I know it was a lot.

I do remember that while I was back in the kitchen, I saw Ben’s wife wrestling a slab of pork belly filled with different herbs and spices. I believe I asked what she was doing, and Ben told me she was rolling the porchetta. They make porchetta five days a week — now I think it’s six — and they offer it on their porchetta sandwich. The slow-roasted, fatty, juicy, crispy porchetta gets sliced and placed on a baguette with a chimichurri mayo and Boursin cheese.

Like I said, I don’t remember everything I ate that day, but I do remember that porchetta sandwich, and I also remember the chicken wings. Pretty much every barbecue joint is going to offer smoked wings, but 95% of them are going to smoke the wings and then deep-fry them to add that snap and crisp.

At Meat & Company, they smoke the chicken wings and then char-grill them on the charbroiler. You still get some crunch, but you also get these really incredible charred bits and smokiness.

I know I had their classic Buffalo sauce that day, but they also gave me their garlic Parm wings. And these garlic Parm wings are so good they don’t even deserve to be called garlic Parm wings, because that would put them in the same category as all the losers out there making garlic Parm wings by simply tossing fried wings in a large bowl of canned garlic Parm sauce. No, these are heavenly garlic Parm wings. This is manna sent down from the Lord himself, from the heavens, given to us lowly servants. The children of Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert waiting to enter the Promised Land. Something tells me they would’ve wandered for another 40 years if they’d had these garlic Parm wings to eat every day.

These chicken wings get smoked and charred, then completely bathed in copious amounts of real butter and real garlic. Only when they’ve been completely drowned in the butter and garlic do they get a heavy, heavy hand of freshly shaved Parmesan cheese — Parmesan shaved so finely that when it hits the warmth of the butter and the chicken, it disappears and melts into each wing. But they keep shaving until a snowcap has formed. The Mount Everest of chicken wings, butter, garlic, and Parmesan cheese. And although it’s a sin, the house-made ranch they serve with their wings is the perfect complement.

Meat & Company is one of my all-time favorite restaurants to visit. I’ve been there three times in the last two years, and if they were any closer, I’d be there more often. If they were in the same city as me, I’d be there once a week as a regular customer. The food, the flavors, the space, the staff, and the owners — it’s all a perfect package. Whenever someone reaches out and asks me for a recommendation in Albany, I always send them to Meat & Company. Whether they’re followers on social media, friends of mine here in Syracuse, or even my most hated enemy, I still recommend Meat & Company. And all of this says nothing about the kindness and generosity of Ben, which could be a whole other blog in and of itself.

So it goes without saying, but if you’re ever anywhere near the Capital Region, I highly recommend stopping in to Meat & Company.

And if you’re looking to get me anything for Christmas, I would gladly accept a porchetta sandwich from Meat & Company.

Follow them on Instagram: @meatandcompany_nisky

Visit them at: 2321 Nottingham St. E, Niskayuna, NY