Mad Butcher Still in the Cards?

Image courtesy of A Culinary Photo Journal used under Creative Commons License

GM was so wrapped up in Apple store talk, that he didn’t get very deep into the Old Georgetown Board agenda from March, but sitting in there is some potentially bad news: Jonathan Umbel’s plan to bring a butcher to Georgetown seems to have stalled.

Umbel first announced his plans to open the “Mad Butcher” in the space just west of his Hook and Tacklebox restaurants last October. This is how it was described back then:

At The Mad Butcher, whole pigs and sides of cattle from local farmers would be brought in and prepared on site. There would be an aging room on the property to treat the meat. The business would sell uncooked meat, and a casual cafe and fine dining restaurant would serve it.

Sounds great. But at the March OGB meeting the board decided to reject Umbel’s design concept for the store because the “concept case has been inactive for a period of time.” The whole project was contingent on Umbel actually buying the property, maybe that deal fell through? You can’t blame anyone for getting gun-shy about opening up a restaurant in this environment (or loaning someone money to open a restaurant in this economy). Moreover, perhaps the reason there aren’t any butchers in this town is because there’s not much of a market for it?

Regardless of the reason, GM hopes that the Mad Butcher isn’t permanently shelved (although he’d be fine if they ditched that name.)

So would you shop at the Mad Butcher if it were open or would you just continue to buy your meat along with all the rest of your groceries?