But it's also true that they haven't a clue as to what's coming next. No loud noises, no frenzied machinery, just calm and quiet. Two gray horses shyly watch us from the distance. The calves were born in Bolinas, and from there they go up to Lassen to graze. They make the best meat.
Restaurants wants a big filet, seven pounds and up.
By juggling breeding schedules on a network of provider ranches, Niman Schell keeps a steady stream of steers headed toward the Petaluma slaughterhouse. From Petaluma, the quartered carcasses go to San Francisco for dry-aging and butchering. But that only creates rot, not tenderness. No, it doesn't resemble the chamber of horrors I expected from Fred Wiseman's gut-wrenching documentary Meat . A visit to Niman Schell's Brannan Street processing location, where former steers are turned into designer cuts, proves to be almost undramatic.