Our meat is dense and not heavy with fat. I would say it has a sweeter, better flavor. It's a Sunday at Khorassan, and the tiny shop is crowded with people buying birds for their dinners and stews. The Latino and Muslim customers are either waiting in folding chairs for their birds or surveying the stacks of cages filled with white broiler chickens and black guinea fowl. Smelling like a cross between a slaughterhouse and barnyard and filled with the sounds of cackling birds, Khorassan sells upwards of 3,000 chickens a week trucked in from farms in Pennsylvania and as far as North Carolina.
Customers can call in their order or pick out their bird on site.
Then, it's weighed and sent to the back of the shop to be slaughtered. Because the shop adheres to Islamic standards for preparing food, the butcher says an Islamic blessing before killing the animal. For many customers, freshness is the reason they return week after week. You don't know how long its been dead. A fresh chicken is meat ier and tastes more like chicken.