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'Caviar of protein': Old Mill Creek store stocks exotic

meat

Beth Kaplan, a co-owner of Blackwing Meats and Old Mill Creek Country Store, talks with Andrew Lawrence, one of the butchers near the store's meat counter. (Angelica LaVito / Lake County News-Sun)

Angelica LaVitoNews-Sun

Old Mill Creek Country Store's meat counter looks like a normal meat counter. It displays ground beef and beef steaks, but unlike most others, it also displays ground bison, elk steak, venison striploin and wild boar Italian sausage.

The products shown are just a few of the offerings from its sister company, Blackwing Meats. When husband and wife owners Roger Gerber and Beth Kaplan say they offer everything from tongue to tail, they really mean it.

"When people ask us if we have tongue, we say, 'Don't give us any lip,"' Gerber said.

As Americans grow increasingly health-conscious, alternatives to unhealthy foods have become more popular. Some people who love beef but not the calories and saturated fats have turned to exotic meats for a substitute.

Elk strip steaks, elk ribeye steaks and bison sirloin steaks are displayed at Old Mill Creek Country Store. (Angelica LaVito / Lake County News-Sun)

Bison has become a common alternative to beef. It tastes nearly identical but contains less fat and calories. Demand for it has grown in the double digits for the past six years, according to the National Bison Association. Blackwing distributes between 10,000 and 15,000 pounds of it per week.

"I do tell people that bison is a much better alternative than higher-fat beef products," said Colleen DeBoer, a clinical dietitian at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital and Northwestern Medicine Grayslake Outpatient Center.

Gerber and Kaplan live and encourage healthy lifestyles. They began distributing ostrich meat in 1997 from a kosher farm in South Dakota. The farmer convinced them to get into the bison business, and they continued to expand. They now offer beef, bison, elk, venison, antelope, lamb, pork, wild boar, chevon goat, ostrich, emu, chicken, turkey, pheasant, guinea and Cornish hen, goose and quail, and Muscovy, Pekin and Rouen duck.

Blackwing's supplies more than 3,600 retailers and restaurants including the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock Building. The company also fills online orders nationwide, and it opened Old Mill Creek Country Store in April so local customers could buy their meats in person. Gerber and Kaplan ran the business out of their garage and caretaker's home at their Antioch house before they opened the 24,000 square foot retail store, processing center and office.

Beth Kaplan and Roger Gerber, husband and wife co-owners of Blackwing Meats and Old Mil Creek Country Store, opened the store in April so local customers could physically purchase Blackwing meat and exotic meat products. (Angelica LaVito / Lake County News-Sun)

"People come from Chicago. People come from Deerfield, and Deerfield has a magnificent Whole Foods right on Deerfield Road," Kaplan said. "They all come because the pricing and they can't find the meats we have at Whole Foods."

New customers who come into the physical store may have never tried or even heard of some of the products and are sometimes afraid to try them.

"Fear is the unknown. And part of the problem is because they've never either eaten or prepared bison, elk, venison, antelope, wild boar, it's gotta be mystical and mysterious," Gerber said. "The fact of the matter is they're part of the venison family or they're part of the bovine or they're a hog. There's not much difference, beside maybe you cook it a little faster."

Mikki Markowicz drove past the store all the time on her way from her Lake Geneva home to her clients in the Chicago suburbs. She decided to stop in one day to see what was going on inside.

Since that first visit, Markowicz has tried all of the exotic meats. Her favorite is bison, though she loves them all.

"I'm in here every week," Markowicz said.

She loves to cook and has prepared the different meats for her friends and relatives. So far, "everybody loves it."

The only exotic meat that flopped at Blackwing is alligator, according to Gerber.

"It's garbage," Gerber said. "It tastes like rubber."

Beth Kaplan and Roger Gerber, husband and wife co-owners of Blackwing Meats and Old Mil Creek Country Store, opened the store in April so local customers could physically purchase Blackwing meat and exotic meat products. (Angelica LaVito / Lake County News-Sun)

Bison is the most popular of Blackwing's exotic meats. Though the company got its start selling ostrich meat, ostrich farms have dwindled over the years, causing the price to skyrocket.

"Ostrich is the caviar of protein," Kaplan said. "We used to sell it to restaurants, but we can't supply it."

Blackwing still sells ostrich, but elk has replaced it as an accessible high-protein, low-calorie red meat option. Some elk can taste gamey, but Kaplan said the elk Blackwing sells "flies out the door."

"If it didn't have a label on it, you would think it's beef," Kaplan said.

For now, Gerber and Kaplan are focused on making the new store successful. They are interested in expanding in the future, Kaplan said, and they already have offers on property in Chicago.