Nate Anda takes his meat seriously: a combination of classic culinary training, immersion in the art of charcuterie, and an unshakable commitment to the tradition of butchery has shaped every aspect of his work.
Raised in New Hampshire, Anda’s family later moved to Keswick and first started cooking as a teen, working under Chef Angelo Vangelopoulos at the Ivy Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia. There, and at subsequent internships that followed, he learned about the craft of charcuterie. Eager to make cooking his profession, Anda soon enrolled at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vermont, where he took every course offered on butchery and charcuterie. Returning to his home region of the Mid Atlantic, Anda continued to hone his skills at Equinox Restaurant in Washington, D.C., and Salamander Market in Middleburg, Virginia. In 2004, he accepted his first executive chef role at Tallula in Arlington, Virginia, where he gained critical notices from USA Today and The Washington Post for his charcuterie, especially the house-made bacons.
All the while, Anda continued to build upon his expertise with butcher-shop tours of Italy, fermentation and curing workshops at Iowa State University, and with an internship at The Fatted Calf in San Francisco. In 2008, Anda founded Red Apron Butchery, rooted in Italian charcuterie with a style that emanates from his endless experimentation and curiosity—using flavors from Asian chiles to Fernet Branca to enliven his program.
Through Red Apron, Anda has built close relationships with local farms that all raise their animals following sustainable and humane rearing practices, and many of which are Animal Welfare Approved. During production, he hand-grinds and mixes meats according to his personal, finely tuned recipes for the nearly 70 goods in the Red Apron larder. Each product is cased by hand, aged or smoked – often for months and under careful watch – until it’s just right. was long defined by the classic steakhouse.
Anda’s work earned him a Good Food Award in 2011 for charcuterie, and accolades from The Washington Post, Men’s Health, Bon Appetit, Washingtonian, Urban Daddy and others. Anda is pushing butcher-shop boundaries and making Red Apron home base for artisan charcuterie in the region, earning himself a StarChefs Rising Star Concept Chef Award in 2014.
Red Apron Butcher, a creative collaboration between Chef Nathan Anda, the Neighborhood Restaurant Group and a handful of dedicated regional farmers, is a locally sourced whole animal butcher and small-batch producer of handcrafted charcuterie and fine provisions.
Their philosophy is driven by an inflexible commitment to using only the finest all-natural, hormone and antibiotic free, humanely and sustainably raised beef, pork, lamb and poultry. They have spent years developing the relationships they have with their farmers, and have been recognized as the first American butcher shop to source 100% of its pork from Animal Welfare Approved farms, an organization whose standards are the most strident and rigorous in the nation.
Their craft is defined by an inimitable catalog of nearly 80 original artisanal products – all of which are 100% handmade and deliberately produced in small batches designed not merely to mimic traditional or familiar foods, but rather to introduce both new and innovative flavors inspired by old world technique.
Nathan Anda is the Butcher and Chef at Red Apron Butcher, an artisan butchery and small batch producer of handmade charcuterie founded in 2009, as well as The Partisan, its adjoining restaurant and bar. His combination of traditional techniques and culinary expertise has helped Red Apron emerge as D.C.’s definitive source for real and honest charcuterie, pâtés, salumi, terrines, sausages and more.