They all have something in common: doting parents looking for something to send the kids at college, desperate den mothers or teachers wondering where to take the kids on a field trip, chili cook-off chefs needing just the right meat to top off a recipe, and hunters loaded with fresh game. They all find solutions at Los Gatos Meats and Smoke House.
Five Chiala family members are there to help. Parents John and Donna have owned the University Avenue store for 10 years, gradually expanding their staff with daughters Jackie, 36, and Danielle, 28, and son Brian, 25. Each has a specialty. Danielle can efficiently package and send out 50 pounds of beef jerky for good gnawing. Jackie is a whiz at creating party trays or explaining to squirmy Scouts how sausages are made. Brian can suggest just the right alligator meat to win the chili cook-off and turn a six-point buck into his special venison sausage.
Obviously more than meat retailers, the Chialas cater barbecues, make their own sausages and hot dogs, cure meat, fish and fowl, smoke hams, bacon and jerky, and make sandwiches to go from their deli.
"Customers special-order with us all the time," says Donna, who after the last of her six children graduated from Los Gatos High School, entered the business as bookkeeper. "They call and want suggestions for parties, hard-to-find cuts of meat or super-lean, no nitrate sausages for their diets." But mostly they want the special taste that 61-year-old John perfected when he first took over the store.
Son of longtime Morgan Hill cattle rancher and row-crop farmer Vito Chiala, John grew up with the good taste of well-fed beef and fresh produce. For 20 years, he owned Bell Hardware in Cupertino, where he couldn't resist offering big boxes of corn freshly harvested from his father's 450-acre spread each fall. It's a tradition he continues at the meat store.
John's hardware career ended abruptly when a fire destroyed the building in the late 1980s. Meanwhile, Danielle was working after school at the meat store, which the owners announced they wanted to sell. "She came home in tears when she heard this," Donna recalls. "She loved her job and the Weissners who owned the place then."
The timing was perfect for John. He grabbed the chance to buy the store and the family jumped into the business, which once was a meat locker. Although John knew retailing well, making lean hot dogs was a fresh challenge.
Making good cured meats is another. The Chialas custom-smoke with hickory, and cure meats either for sale or for hunters and anglers, who bring their prizes to be processed. There can be a wait at the height of salmon season, for instance, when a good run creates a backlog.
Two years ago, John incorporated a new method called "tumbling." It's a way to infuse up to 20-pound hams, beef or fowl with marinade, either for immediate cooking or prior to making jerky. What once could consume up to three days of soaking in seasoning now can take 20 minutes. Meat and marinades--such as smoky barbecue, teriyaki, garlic, Italian and blackened--are combined in a tumbling drum which, as it turns, breaks down the meat fibers to create tenderness and absorb seasonings. Special orders can be filled while a customer waits. "We never want to see a customer go home empty-handed," smiles Donna.
Los Gatos Meats and Smoke House, 575 University Ave., Los Gatos. Open Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. 354-7055.
Saratoga, California Since 1975
