Usually I buy steaks only when on sale at my local chain grocery store, especially since the price of beef has skyrocketed; the quality of the steaks is also slipping while the price is rising. Rib eye is our preferred cut; a really good rib eye steak is worth every penny. So I checked out a local butcher shop hoping to find higher quality meat at a decent price and was shocked to see the price for angus beef rib eye - a notch above choice grade per the butcher but since my grocer’s beef is also angus beef I suspect they’re the same - at the eye-popping price of $24.99 per pound. That seems excessive, and I’m pretty confident the butcher’s steak isn’t 250% better than the grocery store’s steak.
Would you pay $24.99 a pound for non-prime steaks? What’s the going price at your butcher shops?
our local Giant had a ‘full service’ butcher / meat department - by sand large one could get any cut in any size you needed, just ask…
then they shifted to buying everything pre-packaged / wrapped from some third party. the meat/beef is now abysmal. the ground beef is so full of gristle & junk it clogs up your teeth…
even the CAB must be the lowest ‘closed my eyes & stamped it’ grade in existence.
our local butcher has good stuff - and for our twice a quarter steak a Delmonico / rib eye is my preference. it used to run $10-$11/lb. last trip $18.95/lb. everything in the shop is either choice or prime. I’m a regular - if I ask about grade I get a ‘hold on a minute’ answer and he disappears into the back & reappears with ‘something more better.’ apparently they are the purveyors of high end quality beef for the local restaurants - I see their trucks ‘out back’ in a number of places (not MickeyD’s…)
so indeed I see prices going higher and higher… not a happy moo-eater here…
I bought non-prime ribeye from a bespoke butcher in San Francisco for $24.95/lb this week. $30 spent bought ample steak for two, when the same cut in two portions in a restaurant would easily have been >$100.
