The texts and calls don’t stop coming as Javier Arze tries to give a tour of his giant Lorton, Virginia, warehouse, the home of Huntsman Game, his wholesale specialty food and game business.
“The quail come from Richmond, Virginia,” he answers one caller. “We raise those birds, so we control the whole breeding process. We don’t give them protein pellets. These birds actually fly. They are $4.75 apiece. I can send you a sample if you’d like to see it.”
The caller is a sous-chef at Blue Duck Tavern. In the span of the next 15 minutes, Arze answers calls from restaurants, a Shenandoah Valley beef supplier and some scientists who are developing an innovative way to grow mushrooms.
In a large walk-in cooler, Arze picks up a vacuum-packed bird. “We bring everything in fresh and send it out fresh. We are the only company that stocks squab fresh in the D.C. area,” he says. “Poussins come in with head and feet on. The USDA doesn’t allow most places to leave them on because they go bad so quickly. These were killed yesterday, and tomorrow they’ll be gone.” In another cooler, loins of Randall Lineback ruby veal, from Chapel Hill Farm in Berryville, Virginia, are aging.
Arze’s client list is a who’s who of chefs in the Washington area and some beyond, including Cindy Wolfe in Baltimore and Marc Vetri in Philadelphia. The squab on Robert Wiedmaier’s menu at Marcel’s comes from Arze, as does the guinea fowl at chef Seng Luangrath’s Thip Khao, the ground beef in Central Michel Richard’s ballyhooed burger, the Spanish saffron at Jaleo and the quail eggs at China Chilcano.
“He’s the go-to guy for specialty items,” says Fabio Trabocchi of Fiola, who has bought, among other items, wild Belon oysters, duck eggs and sea urchin from Arze. “The advantage is his culinary background. He gets it. He knows what we are looking for and what the process is behind what we are doing. He’s not just some salesperson from some company.”
Indeed, the fact that Arze, 49, worked as a chef under legendary taskmaster Yannick Cam gives him platinum status credibility and respect. That chef has always emphasized the supremacy of top-quality ingredients, and Arze takes that to heart in his own business.
Chefs also seek ingredients no one else is using, and Arze is widely known as Sherlock Holmes in that department. Right now he’s on the lookout for Belgian imperial osetra caviar for Wiedmaier, blue-foot chickens for Trabocchi and cuyes (guinea pigs) for Jose Andres. He thinks he has found a farm in Orange County, Virginia, to produce the guinea pigs for him.
Arze has sourced yak, alligator and English woodcock, the last of which weigh less than a pound whole and unplucked and sell for $40 apiece. “One guy wanted lion. I said absolutely not. Even if it was legal, I wouldn’t get it,” he says.
An avid hunter since childhood, Arze is particularly knowledgeable about game and hunts regularly with chefs such as Nick Stefanelli, John Melfi, David Guas and Wiedmaier. Last November, he organized a partridge hunt for about 20 at Chapel Hill Farm in Berryville, Virginia, with Bryan Voltaggio (Volt, Family Meal, et al) providing lunch for everyone afterward featuring ruby veal. The birds felled that day were donated to the anti-hunger nonprofit group Miriam’s Kitchen.
Wiedmaier hooked Arze up with the farm’s owner, Joe Henderson, who had reached an impasse in his effort to sell his ruby veal to chefs. He was selling only whole animals, and few chefs had the ability to deal with breaking down, storing and selling so much meat. The two are a good match, both avid conservationists committed to animals being raised correctly in a natural environment.
Arze found a slaughterhouse that was pristine, processed animals humanely and could package the meat parts for Henderson to pitch to a wide range of clients. Henderson and Arze are now working on an e-commerce site to sell the veal online.
