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Late on a Thursday afternoon, a stream of shoppers flows into International Market on Parker Road, just across from the Colorado Muslim Society’s mosque. Meat cases contain symmetrically arranged cuts of freshly dressed meat. Conspicuously absent is pork.

In a half-hour, you hear Amharic, Arabic, Indian and African dialects. Shoppers order ground lamb, lamb shoulder, lamb chops, leg of lamb. They include a postal carrier, a family from Colorado Springs, an Ethiopian couple and Ammar Amonette, imam of the Colorado Muslim Society. Customers from Kenya, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan shop for foo foo flour, palm oil, ghee, fava beans and fresh-cut meat. Some have been shopping here since the store opened in 1990.

Lamb, beef and goat carcasses hang in a refrigerated cold room behind the store. Here the Middle Eastern tradition of halal is preserved, meaning that meat originates from slaughterhouses that conform to Islamic practices. Similar to the kosher slaughtering tradition (over which a rabbi presides), the animal’s throat is cut and the carcass is drained of blood before processing.

It’s reminiscent of a time when the neighborhood butcher was the place to choose and buy meat wrapped in what was then called butcher’s paper. Refrigerators were smaller, with diminutive freezer compartments that barely contained ice trays, let alone stacks of pre-cut, foam-packed steaks, chops and chickens.

The frost-free refrigerator with room for a side of beef is the norm these days. While neighborhood butchers are still around, increasingly they are few and far between.

At noon on a Monday, chatty high school students straggle into Kai Feng restaurant in Tamarac Square. They’ve come for the only kosher stir fry in town, tucked inside Zaler’s Kosher Meats store.

Here shoppers wear Tevas, khakis and Polo shirts or the dark suits, yarmulkes and long curled sideburns synonymous with orthodox Judaism.

At Carniceria Guadalajara’s meat counter in Aurora, the loyal clientele is three, four and, in some places, five and six deep. They’re buying double-cut pork chops, menudo, chicken giblets, marinated carne asada and plump pink sweetbreads.

Some people pick up tamales on their way out. You don’t have to speak Spanish to shop here, but it helps.

It’s virtually impossible to track the number of Denver butchers in the metropolitan area today, compared with 50 years ago.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says it doesn’t keep that historical information. The local meat cutter’s union defers to the national union, which refers requests back to the local. The Western History department at Denver Public Library has fuzzy numbers.

For example, the 1925 Ballenger & Richards City Directory lists 114 “meat markets” in Denver. The 1956 Colorado State Directory of Business and Industry lists only 35 meat markets in Denver, but those shops possibly paid to have numbers listed.

Supermarkets, with built-in meat sections, are rarely staffed by real butchers. The stereotypical image of the barrel-chested men with strong arms and calloused hands is dwindling. These days, meat cutters are more likely to be affiliated with packing houses or such specialty stores as Marczyk’s Fine Foods, Tony’s Meats and Specialty Foods, Wild Oats stores or Whole Foods Market.

Almost gone is the bloodied white apron, stained from a day of separating chops, feet, steaks and stew meat. An increasingly squeamish consumer base obsessed with sanitation and perfection prefers not to be reminded of the strip steak’s origin.

Just ask Barry Oliver, who with his sons, presides over the business his grandfather started 83 years ago. He comes from behind his counter, past the 1937 National Cash Register he still uses. No electronic calculators here; he counts change the old-fashioned way – “That’s four eighty-five out of 20; and 15 cents makes five, 10 and 20. Thank you very much.”

Oliver can track his family’s journey from the original store on East Sixth Avenue at Marion Street to East 17th Avenue and Pearl Street in 1923 to his current store on Sixth Avenue.

He remembers his father’s standing rule: no credit. Even Mamie Eisenhower paid cash when she shopped at Oliver’s.

“Once, Mrs. (Charles) Gates (of Gates Rubber) came in and wanted to open an account, and my father refused,” Oliver says. “They went back and forth, and finally she asked if she could leave $100 on account, and when it was used up she’d give him another $100. He smiled and said ‘Mrs. Gates, that’ll be just fine.”‘

As a little boy, Oliver loved running turkeys to customers at Thanksgiving. As his own family grew to 11 children, he kept them all clothed and fed, continuing to provide personal service. Sons Rich, Jim and Chris still work with him in the business, and granddaughter Amanda represents the family’s sixth generation in the business.

“We made a good living,” Barry Oliver says. “Between Sixth and York and Sixth and St. Paul, there were six grocery stores and six gas stations. When we opened at Sixth and Pearl, we did meat and Piggly Wiggly did groceries. Now, between discount stores and supermarkets, a lot of small butchers have been put out of business.”

In addition to selling choice-cut beef, Oliver’s sharpens knives and sells seafood, smoked ham shanks, quail, frog legs, veal cheeks, elk tenderloin and cheese-stuffed mushrooms, plus salads and frozen stocks.

Ricaro Gapski, a Brazilian who recently relocated to Colorado, stops in to buy a steak.

“I don’t like chains,” he says. “I like family-driven commerce, and you can tell this is a family place. In Brazil you buy where you can walk to the store and shop. This feels like home.”

In Aurora, Walt Arellano is discovering how difficult it can be to accommodate cultural and demographic shifts. Over the 36 years he’s been in business at Walt’s Fresh Meats on Montview, he’s seen his clientele shift from predominantly Asian to Spanish-speaking to African-American.

“They’re all the same to me, but I have to keep up with what people want,” he says.

Despite his best efforts, he wonders how much longer he can carry on. After eight years minding the store on his own, he wants a break.

“I don’t have anyone to take over for me,” Arellano says wistfully. “And my wife wants to take a vacation with me. The truth is, I’m tired.”

He comes from behind a meat case filled with pig ears, turkey tails, pork tongue, steaks and chitterlings. Large placards hang behind the counter, detailing packaged meat combinations – so much ground beef with so many steaks and roasts – clearly designed for families with freezers.

Arnie Zaler represents a third generation of butchers. He has two rabbis on site to keep things kosher – literally. He comes from a tradition where brisket is cut to order, and the guy who sells it to you can tell you the best way to prepare it.

Who can forget the chaos caused in the musical, “Fiddler on the Roof,” when a rebellious daughter insisted on marrying a lowly tailor instead of entering an arranged marriage to the middle-aged, socially prominent town butcher, thus committing a serious breach of tradition?

In Zaler’s tradition of Polish Jews, he and his butchers know your name and possibly knew your parents.

“When my grandfather opened his shop in 1913, West Colfax was the heart of the Jewish community,” Zaler says. “Where he came from in Poland, the butcher was a very important person. When he died, my father took over, and I learned from him.

“By the ’60s, the Jewish community began to move, and the area was no longer thriving like it once was,” he says. “When my father died suddenly in 2002, we had a family meeting to decide what to do. As the oldest son, it was agreed that I would start the business up again.

“With the new attitude toward eating fresh, natural and organic food, more people are turning to kosher meats. They believe something is kosher because a rabbi blesses it, but that’s a very small piece of the story,” he says. “Only one in five cows is certified kosher. If there is the slightest blemish on its organs, the cow is rejected; the other four go to commercial outlets.

“Even the animal’s lungs are examined, Zaler says. If they’re not deemed perfectly healthy, they’re rejected. Blood is completely drained from carcasses to eliminate contaminants. Finally, slaughter occurs before the animal is 3 years old, the age at which bovine spongiform encephalopathy – “mad cow” disease – sets in, and only the forequarters are used. The rest goes to commercial grocers.

“We treat chickens the same. They’re drained, rinsed and salted to remove any remaining blood.”

Zaler, like the others, realized he had to offer more than just high-quality meat if he wanted to attract and keep a solid customer base. He asked his customers what they wanted: Chinese food won.

Bing Wang has been with Zaler for a year and a half. Wang says people come from Utah and Wyoming to eat kosher Chinese food at the little restaurant tucked inside the store. And until Zaler sealed the deal with Invesco Field, Coors Field and the Pepsi Center, no one had a lock on kosher hot dogs either. So now observant Jewish families can have the same experience as any other. Yes, he has kosher beer too.

Zaler isn’t the only butcher to modernize his business.

Jeff Tucker bought Fred’s Fine Meats from original owner Fred Deligio, who presided over the store for 27 years – first in a long-gone Supersaver market at East Third Avenue and Holly Street, then at its present location at 5614 E. Cedar Ave.

Tucker also realized that to make a success of the meat cutter’s side of the business, he had to include more of what his customers wanted.

“We still have people who come in and want a specific cut of meat, but maybe they don’t have time to double bake a potato or make a salad and cook vegetables. So we do it for them.”

Natalie Fox is shopping with her 4-year-old son, Henry. She lives in the neighborhood and has been shopping at Fred’s for about three years.

“I come because the quality of beef and chicken is better,” she says. “If I don’t see what I want, I ask for it and Jeff or one of the guys gets it for me. It’s just more personal.”

Jason Pissare, 25, abandoned his college studies in chemical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines because he had always wanted to be a butcher. By the time his Uncle Mike

Pissare bought the store in 1999, it had moved from Capitol Hill to its present location on South Havana.

Jason Pissare manages Sir Loin Meat Shoppe in Aurora because he enjoys working with people and wants to continue a family tradition.

“A lot of people miss that old-fashioned service,” Pissare says. “They want someone they can trust, not a piece of meat out of a warehouse. We have three generations of some families who shop here. It requires trust. We know people on a first-name basis, their kids and their dogs.”

Sir Loin’s offerings include alligator, rattlesnake, rabbit sausage and emu. The store’s 40-

foot-long case is filled with chops, and ready-to-cook items, including giant Idaho potatoes stuffed with chicken and cheese; crawfish-stuffed pork chops; Piedmontese steaks; and bacon-and-blue-cheeseburgers. Just in case you don’t have time to make your own, you can pick up a container of lobster bisque, swordfish chowder or tomato-basil soup.

“Sure we’ve had to make some changes, but that applies to everything,” Jason Pissare says. “But butcher stores will never die; we’ll just be thinned out a bit.”

Regina Avila contributed to the research for this story.

Staff writer Ellen Sweets can be reached at 303-820-1284 or esweets@denverpost.com.

Butcher Shops