Meet Anthony Villegas | Owner, Chef, & Butcher at The Meat Cellar

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anthony Villegas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anthony, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Opening a restaurant was always our calling—creating a place with quality food and warm service. I grew up in a restaurant family, and then spent my 20s working my way through the hospitality industry, from server to general manager, and later as a meat sales representative. This experience allowed me to become an expert in naturally-grown meats and seafood, and opened doors for me to know chefs all across Los Angeles and discuss with them the quality of product and menu development.

In my family life, with Sara and our five children, we were discovering our passion for cooking and entertaining during this time. We often hosted large Sunday Suppers for our family and friends, and eventually began exploring the world of catering by hosting small, upscale dinner parties in our client’s homes, and featuring the high-quality ingredients I sold as a meat sales rep.

Through a chef introduction, I got the opportunity in 2015 to operate a few booths at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which gave us the motivation and funding to invest in our first brick-and-mortar location of The Meat Cellar in Claremont in 2016—a hybrid butcher/retail shop with a scratch kitchen. We aimed to create a fast-casual restaurant where customers could buy ingredients or dine in. Our philosophy then, which has continued to this day, was to create The Home You Never Knew You Had, and its customers responded. The Meat Cellar quickly became a popular spot, leading to conversations about expansion.

In 2017, with support from the City of Claremont, we secured a new 4,000-square-foot location in a historic building, expanding our offerings with a full-service dining room and craft cocktails. This location became our first franchise, and we are now finalizing our latest concept, The Market by the Meat Cellar, in San Juan Capistrano, featuring the same exceptional restaurant experience we’ve always offered, but supplemented by an extensive retail section.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Restaurant ownership is NEVER an easy road, but when it’s a labor of love, you find the strength and the resources to meet whatever challenges come up.

After we opened in 2016, we quickly became known for our exceptional large format steaks that rival (and usually surpass) cuts found in the biggest name steakhouses, thanks to my day job at Premier Meat Company and access to and knowledge of the best meat out there. But it’s also always been important to us to offer fresh real dishes across our entire menu. Everything we serve has been made from scratch from day 1, and our original location didn’t even have a freezer. We want people to know that anything they eat at The Meat Cellar has been prepared with top quality ingredients. After seeing the widespread negative health impacts of industrial seed oils that are used in virtually every restaurant kitchen, several years ago, we changed our fryer oil to avocado oil, and shortly after that started frying our French fries in beef tallow. While it’s significantly more expensive than the chemical-filled alternatives, we knew it was important to make the switch.

But beyond our food quality, we are heart-centered people, and we’ve also become known for that. We genuinely care about our people and our community, and we know that food connects us like nothing else. Ultimately, we believe that life’s best moments happen around dinner tables, and we’re honored every single time customers choose us for those moments. We do our best to provide exceptional food and hospitality, always.

Of course Covid was one of our most significant challenges, but it also gave us a chance to step back and reevaluate why we were there and how we were operating. When we had to close our dining rooms in March 2020 –– and one entire location –– with little notice, we were forced to suddenly lay off the vast majority of our employees, and drastically cut the hours of the few who remained. Just as quickly as we orchestrated the closures, we realized we needed to do whatever we could to support our team to get through that stressful time. We also realized that we wanted to make sure our employees had the opportunity to stay connected, and so we started offering a daily family meal to go. Every week for two or three months, we posted a menu on Instagram, detailing what we would offer Monday thru Friday, inviting anyone in the hospitality industry to RSVP for any or all of the days and to then pick up their dinner each night. More than once we received a DM from someone not in the hospitality industry, asking if they could also get a meal. We always said yes. During that period, we distributed several thousand meals, and we’ll always be grateful that we were able to provide that help to the community.

It might have been easier to close our doors and wait things out, but we knew there was a need, and distributing those family meals gave us a tremendous sense of purpose during a dark time. It challenged us to remember who we were and why we’re in this business. A restaurant is a business, of course, but we’re here because we are called to connect people through high-quality, genuinely nourishing food.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Traveling is one of our favorite hobbies, and Sara loves planning regular trips for our family. We’ve also gotten pretty into staycations too and making sure we’re taking time to appreciate the local things we might sometimes take for granted, and we really love it when people visit and we can share with them some of our favorite SoCal things. Right out of the gate we would insist that our visitor head to the San Clemente Pier, ideally at sunset. We’ve certainly enjoyed some oysters at The Fisherman’s (a local institution at the base of the pier) but our favorite sunset vibe is to just stroll the length of the pier to admire the sunset and watch the surfers. It’s a must no matter the season.

We’re also lucky that we get to walk pretty much every day on the San Clemente Beach Trail, so we’d suggest that our friend take a morning walk and stop at West Toast, an adorable little beachfront restaurant that has some exceptional food. Their bagel breakfast sandwich is literally among out favorite breakfast sandwiches. If they were looking for a little more physical activity, we’d send them to a pilates class at our friend Teri’s studio, Veda Bar. We know that California has a reputation for offering some wellness practices that might not be easy to find in other places, and after pilates, they might want to ask Teri if they could try a session in her hyperbaric oxygen chamber.

After that busy day, we’d likely have our friends over for dinner, but if everyone wanted to go out for a nice meal, we’d probably head to Rare Society on Del Mar (the main street) in San Clemente. It’s relatively new, the space is gorgeous and they do a fresh spin on classic steakhouse food. I usually can’t resist a glass of Faust Cab.

If our friend had a teenager, we’d recommend they spend some time at the Irvine Spectrum, our teenage daughters’ favorite place to go in the OC. They have all of their favorite stores to kill some time shopping, but a real highlight for them is to have lunch at Silver Lake Ramen. Our teenagers go so often that the staff has gotten to know them and remembers all of their favorite orders. Not sure if we should share this, but one time when I joined the girls for lunch, the manager then comped some appetizers, demonstrating just what beloved customers they are.

We’d also suggest that our friends spend a day in Newport Beach. Lunch at Malibu Farms overlooking the Marina and the yachts is a must. Their food is fresh and delicious, from their crudite platter to their adaptogen lattes. I’d also suggest that they rent a Duffy Boat from one of a number of vendors so they could tool around the water in Newport Harbor. Our family rented one on the 4th of July once and we packed food and had the best time cruising around before the fireworks started. After dark we could see the shows in several areas from the water. That was an extra special day, but it’s super fun to see the homes and the boats from that perspective any time of year.

If they wanted to get out of the OC bubble, we’d recommend they spend a couple of nights at the Hotel Casa del Mar in Santa Monica. The hotel is historic but recently restored and is simply gorgeous, with beautiful common spaces, plush rooms and exceptional food. It’s just south of the Santa Monica Pier, right on the sand, and there’s so much to do. They could do all of the carnival stuff on the pier or put on some roller skates and head down the paved path about a mile to Venice Beach. If they had a car, they might decide to drive to Venice instead, where they would definitely have to do some shopping along Abbott Kinney Blvd. They might want to pop into Erewhon (the super popular specialty grocery store) where they could order lunch from the hot bar and then get a coffee from Alfred’s.

Like I said, this kind of thing is our family’s favorite, so I could go on and on, but that is probably plenty.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Not everyone knows that, in addition to owning and operating The Meat Cellar, I still have a “day job” selling meat and seafood for Premier Meat Company. In the fall of 2008, I interviewed with Harry Greenberg, the company’s owner, and hit it off. I shared with Harry that I hadn’t yet found a professional home, a place where I could really settle in and build a career for myself. At the end of that interview, Harry offered me the position. I accepted and immediately began building relationships with his customers, some of the biggest restaurants in Southern California and Las Vegas. As time went on, Premier –– owned and operated by Harry and after his retirement, his son Omer –– grew rapidly and changed their business model to allow their sales reps to be independent contractors, allowing those reps to serve their customers on their own terms. This change gave me a tremendous amount of flexibility in building and managing my customer relationships. It also gave me the freedom to pursue additional opportunities. In 2015, when we decided to open The Meat Cellar, I was able to maintain those relationships and that business, which meant that we could keep our income –– and we didn’t have to choose between our family’s security and our ambition of creating a new offering to the community. In addition to that flexibility, working for Premier has allowed me to build relationships with a variety of ranchers, farmers and meat producers, and to have a unique understanding of industry trends. We consider ourselves so fortunate that I found my professional home at Premier all of those years ago, and that like a true family, the Greenberg’s have encouraged me to continue to grow and expand personally and professionally.

Website: https://themeatcellar.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themeatcellar/?hl=en

Image Credits
The Meat Cellar