Tom Mylan (born April 26, 1976) is an American

butcher A butcher is a person who may Animal slaughter, slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesale ...

, educator, writer, and author, specializing in local, sustainably raised meat. He was the executive butcher and co-owner of "The Meat Hook" from 2009 until 2015, a butcher shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Mylan has been responsible for several community oriented-food projects, including co-founding the "Unfancy Food Show", an annual, affordable event featuring local, artisanal food producers, which celebrates Brooklyn's return to hand-crafted, environmentally aware food ways.

Biography

Tom Mylan was born in Southern California. He was raised in

Reno Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada–California border. It is the county seat and most populous city of Washoe County, Nevada, Washoe County. Sitting in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

; at age 12 his family moved to Orange County,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. In his 20s, he was a

vegetarian Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the Eating, consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects as food, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slau ...

and moved to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

for three years. In 2003, Mylan moved to New York City, where he started out working at Murray's Cheese Shop. By 2005 he was worked at Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth's Marlow & Sons cafe in New York, as a buyer and manager. In 2007, the meat supplier Fleisher's for Marlow & Sons, and their sister-restaurant Diner, decided they would reduce the quantity of meat they would sell to small businesses. Marlow & Sons needed to find an in-house butcher, but they struggled to hire someone. Mylan agreed to learn butchering from Fleisher's at the Applestone Meat Company in

Upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York (state), New York that lies north and northwest of the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York. Upstate includes the middle and upper Hudson Valley, ...

. From 2009 until 2015, he was the executive

and co-owner of ''The Meat Hook'', a butcher shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where they cut, smoke and cure meat that is sourced from small, family-owned farms. His co-founders and partners at The Meat Hook included Brent Young and Ben Turley. In 2010, Mylan was named one of ''The New York Observer's'' "Insurgents of 2010," as well as one of the Chow 13, the Chow website's annual list of the most influential people in the U.S. food world. Mylan has a forthcoming book, ''The Meat Hook Meat Book'', and recently published an iPad application, ''The Better Bacon Book'' with Open Air Publishing and Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor. Mylan has been featured on the Travel Channel's No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, the Cooking Channel's'' FoodCrafters'', NPR's ''

All things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...

,'' and ''

The Brian Lehrer Show Brian Lehrer (born October 5, 1952) is an American radio talk show host on New York City's public radio station WNYC. His daily two-hour 2007 Peabody Award-winning program,

.'' In addition he has appeared as a guest lecturer at Yale University. He has written for ''New York Magazine'', Gourmet.com, and he currently writes a column for the ''Atlantic Magazine Food Channel''. He lives in Brooklyn, with his wife, Annaliese Griffin, the editor and co-owner of "Brooklyn Based".

References

External links

The Meat HookThe Unfancy Food Show
* "Finally, Tom Mylan is on Our Meat Hook" from ''The Brooklyn Paper'

* Breslor, Sarah

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mylan, Tom American butchers American chefs Living people 1976 births American environmentalists Activists from New York City Chefs from New York City