Cutting their teeth while slicing beef

Bill San Antonio

A man walked into Center Cuts gourmet butcher in Roslyn Heights just after it opened on April 18 and asked the boy working behind the counter to introduce him to the manager.

The boy, Justin Aranoff, smirked and reached out to shake his hand – he was the manager the man sought.

“How many people my age can say they’re 20 years old and own their own business?” said Aranoff, who runs the shop with his friend and business partner, Doug Cohen.

“I see all my friends on Instagram posting pictures from the Dominican Republic or wherever they are on spring break,” he said. “I’m here until three in the morning and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Aranoff said he and Cohen spend at least 10 hours each day at the shop – located at 382 Willis Avenue, at the site of the former Prime Time Butcher – working around the clock to establish themselves in the community.

But they will not have to introduce themselves to North Shore customers the way most new business owners do.

That’s because Aranoff and Cohen opened the shop with a customer base already intact, having created a list of e-mail addresses of many of the people they served as butchers at the Meat House, which closed in January.

“People wanted to know what was next for us,” said Cohen, 24, of Roslyn Heights. “We had talked about opening a butcher shop together, creating business plans, so we took the e-mails and said we’d keep them posted.”

Cohen and Aranoff, of East Hills, would serve up prime cuts at the Meat House by day and fantasize about their own shop in coffee shops by night.

When they learned their days at the Meat House were numbered, their dream was suddenly close to becoming reality.

“When we found out [Prime Time] closed also, it just seemed like something we couldn’t pass up,” Aranoff said. “Everything was still intact from the old place, the set-up, the equipment, everything.”

Aranoff and Cohen said they wanted their shop to succeed where Prime Time and the Meat House failed.

They hired local chef Hunter Wells, an Old Westbury native who has trained in South Carolina and Spain, and a staff of professional cooks to assist him.

They began purchasing meats from local farmers who raise their animals without feeding them hormones, as well as cheeses directly from Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

They then crafted a menu of deli sandwiches, homemade marinades and other ready-cooked foods to transform the shop from a traditional butcher to a potential lunch spot.

“We want to do it all, we want to be that place for you in the community,” Cohen said. “Yeah, there will always be that guy who will spend a little more on his skirt steak in the supermarket, but the meat isn’t going to be as good or as good for you as what you’ll get with us.”

Cohen studied restaurant management at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania and graduated in 2011 with a degree in hospitality management.

After starting his career at a hotel, he went on to the Meat House, where he became head butcher within his first eight months.

During his time there, Cohen trained Aranoff – who left Adelphi University’s baseball program after his freshman season as an outfielder – to be a butcher.

“It wasn’t working out, school or baseball,” Aranoff said. “I had been working in restaurants since I was 14 years old. This is what I wanted to do and I knew that, so I went and got a job at the Meat House.”

Aranoff said he and Cohen got to know many customers from around the North Shore while at the Meat House, so it wasn’t difficult for the two to gather their list of e-mail addresses for updates on when and where Center Cuts would open.

But, he said, he was not prepared for the wave of reply messages they would receive, or the customers who would come by the shop even before it had opened and wish them luck.

“My husband can’t wait for you to open,” Aranoff said, reading one of their reply e-mails. “My son eats nothing but your marinated steak tips.”

Cohen said he wants the shop to become a staple of the community. A grand opening celebration is being planned for sometime near Memorial Day weekend.

“I want to barbeque and a ribbon-cutting and I want to do tastings and really go all out with this,” he said. “A butcher shop is a very community-oriented thing, and that’s what we want this to be. We want to be part of the Roslyn family.”

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