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Hackensack Salumi. Who knew?
« on: July 16, 2013, 10:02:13 PM »
Old World charcuterie and salumi, made in Hackensack
Tuesday July 16, 2013, 10:08 AM   
BY  BILL ERVOLINO
STAFF WRITER
The Record
 

Marc Buzzio and Paul Valetutti checking on a batch of pancetta recently at Salumeria Biellese in Hackensack.


Fouad Alsharif, a Salumeria Biellese partner, holding a coppa at the Hackensack facility. 
STAFF PHOTOS BY VIOREL FLORESCU

The prosciutto, guanciale and pancetta offered at Manhattan's Biricchino restaurant don't have the heavy, oversalted taste found in so many of the Italian meats cured on this side of the Atlantic. Which means they probably come from … Parma? Calabria? Puglia?

"Actually, no," co-owner Marc Buzzio replies, with a grin that's barely visible from under his bushy, brown mustache. "We make it in Hackensack." Then, just to make sure there's no confusion, Buzzio points west and adds, "New Jersey."

Two weeks later, Buzzio is providing a tour of Salumeria Biellese, a former electronics warehouse on Park Street that was transformed, five years ago, into a producer of Old World salumi — or, to use the French term, charcuterie — for, among others, Bruno's in Lodi, D'Angelo in Princeton, the Dean & DeLuca markets on Broadway and Madison Avenue, and, of course, Biricchino, the West 29th Street restaurant that the family business opened to show off what it creates.

Buzzio sells to a few dozen restaurants and gourmet shops in New Jersey and around the country, and, he noted, that part of the business has been expanding.

"Our customer base is definitely growing," Buzzio said. "Right now, we produce about 5,000 pounds of meat a week. But we're taking baby steps. We don't care about being everywhere. We care about being good."

To that end, not much about the business has changed since Buzzio's father, Ugo, started it 88 years ago in New York's Hell's Kitchen. The business eventually moved to Chelsea, where the restaurant and an adjacent wholesale shop and deli, also called Salumeria Biellese, sit on the corner of West 29th Street and Eighth Avenue.

Curing (a centuries-old process used to preserve meat by salting, drying and/or smoking) took place at this location until 2008. Today, the Hackensack plant is where the meats are cut, cleaned, seasoned and stored until they cure, a process that can take at least six months. (Culatello, which Buzzio describes as "the most prized pork product in Italy," takes over a year to cure properly.)

"We source locally," Buzzio said, "using hogs bred to our specifications. Nothing genetically altered." (Buzzio's suppliers include Double Brook Farm in Hopewell.)

In addition to the more familiar Italian products (prosciutto, coppa, pancetta), Salumeria Biellese makes Spanish sausage (chorizo) and a variety of French specialties.

"We do a French garlic sausage," Buzzio said, "a rillette de canard [duck paté] and traditional French dry salami called Petit Jesu, or Baby Jesus, because it weighs about nine pounds and takes nine months to make."

Inside the plant is spotless — it undergoes daily U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections — and whatever isn't white is stainless steel, from the refrigerators to the work stations to the drying racks. Chorizos and soppressata (dry salami) rest in different rooms. In a large walk-in refrigerator, rolling bins called lugs are filled with hundreds of pounds of spiced meat that will eventually become salami.

Beyond all the stainless steel, the plant's most noticeable characteristic is its distinctive aroma. Or, more precisely, its several distinctive aromas, which include the many meats in various stages of curing along with garlic, fennel, hot pepper, cinnamon, clove and mace.

Heady aromas

For the uninitiated, the funky bouquet can be a bit overwhelming. But, as Buzzio's partner Paul Valetutti laughingly notes, "Salami-making is not for the faint of heart."

Valetutti, who has been in the business for 33 years, is the son-in-law of the late Piero Fiorio, who became Ugo Buzzio's business partner in 1960.

Fouad Alsharif, another Fiorio son-in-law — and current Salumeria Biaellese partner — has been with the company since 1991. "I do the IT stuff, bookkeeping and a little bit of everything," he says.

Apparently, the only thing Alsharif will not do is eat much of what his company produces. A Muslim, he doesn't eat pork, although he does enjoy the bresaola (air-dried salted beef) and other cured beef products made on the premises.

The Hackensack plant is managed by Marc Buzzio's 29-year-old son, Drew, who lives in Union City. Valetutti lives in Mahwah; Alsharif lives in Norwood; and the elder Buzzio, who grew up in Union City, in Morris County. As a result, they say, moving the curing operation to North Jersey has made their lives a bit less stressful.

Convenient access

"The beauty of this location is its accessibility to New York City," Marc Buzzio said, "as well as our closeness to everything — Route 80, Route 46. And, unlike Manhattan, it's easy to get a tractor-trailer in and out of here."

But is it large enough?

"The original space we rented in Hackensack was 7,000 square feet," Buzzio reported. "It's been added to since then — it's now probably 18,000 to 19,000 square feet. We need more space, but that doesn't necessarily mean moving. We could rent another space for dry storage and keep the present location strictly for production."

At 60, Buzzio says he has no plans to retire. And even if he does, there's another generation, his son included, waiting in the wings.

As Drew Buzzio says, "I grew up knowing that I never wanted to do what my father and grandfather did. But, the more I learned about the business, the more I wanted to do it. This whole artisanal way of doing things. When you see what goes into it, you want to continue on with the traditions and practices. It's good. It's important."

Email: ervolino@northjersey.com

- See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/food_dining/215622981_Old_World_charcuterie_and_salumi__made_in_Hackensack.html?page=all#sthash.llWH7yln.dpuf