Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Villegas.
The Meat Cellar’s Executive Chef/Owner Anthony Villegas was destined to own a restaurant after being raised in Puerto Vallarta by his father and stepmother, restaurateurs who included their family in the day-to-day operation of their businesses. Some of his earliest and most consistent childhood memories come from the restaurants.
After moving full-time to Southern California after college, Anthony worked his way through the restaurant industry –– from server to bar manager to general manager, to a wine sales rep to a purveyor of general food products, specialty foods and finally meat and seafood, at Premier Meat Company in 2008. Eventually, an expert in naturally-grown beef, wild-caught seafood and humanely-raised pork and poultry, Anthony found himself spending significant time with his chef customers, discussing menus, quality and standards for some of the most noteworthy restaurants in and around Los Angeles.
As his career in meat sales took off, Anthony and his wife Sara developed a mutual passion for cooking and food and for entertaining their friends. It was then that Anthony discovered his extensive talents as a home cook, hosting regular Sunday Suppers in their backyard for friends and family, sometimes numbering 50 or more guests. As time went on, Anthony and Sara began catering as dinner party specialists, focusing on small, upscale dinner parties in customers’ homes, featuring the high-quality meats and seafood that they served daily in their home.
In 2015, through an introduction by a well-known Los Angeles-area chef, Anthony was given an opportunity to operate a booth at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in the city of Indio. Anthony dove right into commercial foodservice, taking a crew to Coachella, and serving sandwiches to the crowds.
The profit and the energy of the festival gave Anthony and Sara a little cash and a lot of courage to create their first brick and mortar location, identifying a 1,200 square foot spot in a Claremont strip mall to build their then-unusual concept: a hybrid butcher/retail shop with a scratch kitchen, where customers could buy the ingredients to cook at home or stay for dinner in the restaurant. They quietly opened their doors in March 2016 with a small kitchen and front of the house staff, allowing Anthony and Sara to unveil their concept: a fast-casual restaurant and retail shop with an in-house butcher counter, exclusive specialty food items and boutique wines, featuring a friendly, attentive staff offering high-quality products and exceptional customer service. From its opening days, The Meat Cellar sought to be The Home You Never Knew You Had, and its customers responded. As 2016 came to a close, The Meat Cellar was lucky to have a packed dining room most nights of the week, with lines out the door on weekends, leading Anthony and Sara to begin conversations about expansion.
In 2017, with support from the City of Claremont, The Meat Cellar identified and secured a new 4,000 square foot location within a historic building on Foothill Blvd, the 100-year-old Wolfe’s Market. After substantial renovations, the new Meat Cellar moved down the street in February 2018, adding a full-service dining room and craft cocktail menu as new staples of the brand, in addition to the high-quality scratch menu and warm, welcoming service.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I don’t think we ever expected a smooth road, and of course there have been bumps, but overall, we’re grateful to have been so well-received by our loyal customers. We had –– and accepted –– opportunities to grow very soon after opening our first brick and mortar location, which weren’t completely expected. Probably our biggest obstacle was the protest by our neighbors that stalled our opening by several months. The idea for relocation wasn’t even our idea ––Claremont’s former City Manager Tony Ramos was an early fan of the concept and encouraged us to work with the Wolfe family to take over the space that their family market had occupied for decades. We sailed thru the permit and construction process –– which included approvals at the local, county and state levels –– only to be unfairly sidelined by neighbors who protested the approval of our liquor license at the 11th hour, long after the Claremont Planning Commission’s meeting where no one appeared at the public hearing to contest the project’s approval. We were on track to open in time for the holidays in 2017 when we received word just before Halloween that our liquor license would be held up for up to six months because of the neighbors’ concern that our family restaurant would create too much noise near their homes.
We worked closely with the city to address their concerns and agreed to shortened hours of operation and monthly meetings with the neighbors after opening, and they finally agreed to drop their protest in early February 2018. Having invested substantial money in the renovation, we felt super lucky that we were able to hold on for those extra three months and were still able to open. After it was all resolved, we announced on a Sunday morning that we would be opening in the new location that evening. We’ll never forget the love we felt when we were taking down the paper that had covered the windows for months, and we saw that people were lining up to be the first ones in the new space. We were blown away by our customers’ loyalty. Once we were operational, the neighbors realized that we were, in fact, just a family restaurant that happened to serve wine and cocktails with dinner, and they declined to continue the monthly meetings with us after only two meetings.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with The Meat Cellar – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Of course, we quickly became known for our exceptional large-format steaks that rival (and usually surpass) cuts found in the biggest name steakhouses, thanks to Anthony’s day job at Premier Meat Company and his access to and knowledge of the best meat out there. But it’s also always been important to us to offer fresh real dishes across our entire menu. Everything we serve has been made from scratch from day 1, and our original location didn’t even have a freezer. We want people to know that anything they eat at The Meat Cellar has been prepared with top quality ingredients. After seeing the widespread negative health impacts of industrial seed oils that are used in virtually every restaurant, we changed our fryer oil to avocado oil. While it’s significantly more expensive than the chemical-filled alternatives, we knew it was important to make the switch.
But we are heart-centered people, and we’ve also become known for that. We genuinely care about our people and our community, and we know that food connects us like nothing else. While the pandemic has been difficult, we’ll always be grateful that we were able to provide free family meals to food service workers who needed some extra help. It might have been easier to close our doors and wait things out, but we knew there was a need, and distributing those family meals gave us a tremendous sense of purpose during a dark time. It challenged us to remember who we are and why we’re in this business.
Ultimately, we believe that life’s best moments happen around dinner tables, and we’re honored every single time customers choose us for those moments. We do our best to provide exceptional food and hospitality, always.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Given that we’re still in the midst of this pandemic, not much about the future is certain, and we’re pretty much focused on the short-term. It’s been fun to turn our parking lot into an outdoor dining room – that’s one thing we always felt was missing here. –– so we’ll see how we can make that space cozier in these colder months. We’ll continue to stay open to changes and new opportunities –– that’s one of our values –– but we’re content to just keep refining our food and our hospitality so we can be a bright spot for our people during these tough times.
Pricing:
- You don’t have to spend a fortune to have a great meal with us. Our basic burger and fries is just $9.
Contact Info:
- Address: 160 W. Foothill Blvd, Claremont, CA 91711
- Website: www.themeatcellar.com
- Phone: 9099717875
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: themeatcellar
- Facebook: themeatcellar
- Twitter: themeatcellar
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