Radius Butcher & Grocery Brings European-Style Fresh Market to Austin

For food lovers eager to explore new flavors and textures, Radius Butcher & Grocery delivers. The shop opened last week in the former Salt & Time space on East Seventh Street to offer seasonal, organic produce from local farms, Gulf seafood and pasture-raised meats sold in a whole-animal philosophy of cooking. The store also stocks exclusively seed oil-free packaged and prepared foods and has thoughtfully curated shelves of ancient grains, and grass-fed dairy sold in glass, instead of plastic, as often as possible. 

With 15 years of experience in the culinary world, General Manager Joe Saenz concedes that “there aren’t any more muscles (on a farm animal) now than there have been.” What has changed is what we like to eat. 

Whole-animal butcher shop

Consider the Toro steak. The fatty slab comes from the navel of a cow, and “is thought of as the original pastrami,” said Saenz. It can be slow-cooked, smoked, or ground into a burger, with incredible, flavorful results. “I’ve been doing this a long time… lo and behold, (Toro steak) actually has lots of versatility and lots to offer in other ways I wouldn’t have given it a chance for.”

A San Antonio native, Saenz never considered whole animal utilization, or using every part of the animal, until he left Texas, but the approach has helped him understand the effort going into each bite, from the animal and the rancher down to the grass and soil. It creates “a deeper, richer appreciation for food you’re already eating.” 

Saenz and Radius Executive Chef Kim Plafke are both alumni of Brooklyn’s The Meat Hook, a whole-animal butcher shop cited as grocery store inspiration by Radius Butcher & Grocery owner Kevin Fishner. “Executive chef at a butcher shop sounds weird,” said Fishner. “But because we’re a whole animal shop, there’s a lot of odds and ends … So we have beef bourguignon, we have chili, we have chicken salad, we have smoked fish dip. It’s really an exercise in utilization.”

For those with an established relationship with Salt & Time, the former market’s Head Butcher, Wesley Duke, is also part of the Radius team today, acting in the same capacity. The shop also works with around a dozen local farmers to source proteins and produce, including Elgin’s Refugee Collective Farm. 

Garlic chives and the grocer

Seasonality can be a curveball, of course, if not embraced. “I think that’s one of the cool things about the constraints of local, seasonal cooking,” said Fishner. “You’re encouraged to use things that might be a little bit unfamiliar.” For him, that includes the garlic chives, a bright green allium sourced from his own store. He cooked them up with local Texas red snapper and mushrooms for the very first time recently. All of the ingredients came from Radius Butcher & Grocery, of course. Recipe cards can be found throughout the market. 

Fishner arrives in the food world from tech and finance, but the New Jersey native has developed a profound interest in farm-to-table food, food growing practices and ways to select the best possible ingredients for cooking, from seasonality to sear. Additionally, his grocery is partnering with local farmers to raise a different breed of chicken, the Pioneer or Naked Neck, than the typical Cornish cross sold at larger grocers, paying special attention to their diets and more. Details can be found on the Radius blog, a deep dive for those drawn to all things food.

Inspired by the European, fresh market style of shopping and cooking, Fishner hopes shoppers likewise visit for in-season produce and then chat with the butchers to find out which cuts of meat may complement that produce. From there, the shelves of spices, fresh baked breads and grains can help round out their meal. 

Sustainably sourced groceries

Fishner named San Francisco’s Bi-Rite, New York’s vertically integrated farm and restaurant, Bluehill and The Meat Hook in Brooklyn, as influences. Still, Radius does a few things differently. “I am pretty sure we’re the only grocery store in the world that is seed oil free,” he said. And, “we don’t have 45 different ketchups,” said Kevin Fishner. “We have two or three. But everything that you would get out of Whole Foods we have, except for home goods.”

In a city blessed with half a dozen grocery stores, as many thriving weekly farmers’ markets and a handful of farm-to-table grocers, Radius Butcher & Grocery hopes to shine as bright as any.

“We care so much about sourcing,” said Fishner. “Many of the ingredients we’re sourcing are used by the Michelin restaurant restaurants in the town,” he added, upping the ante for shoppers interested in tasting the best. 

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