iso: Whole lamb or half lamb.

[boris_qd]

I'm looking for a good place to get either a whole small lamb (say <30 lbs.) or half of a larger lamb for Thanksgiving. Must be in SF.

Never frozen, local is better then frozen from elsewhere - but will take what i can get.

Reliable Mission butchers (i've had mixed luck in the past)? Something in Chinatown?

Thanks!

[ML8000]

Try the halal butchers. There's a few in the Civic Center/Tenderloin area, like Salama Halal Meats. In Berkeley there's Indus Food Center. In Oakland there's Oasis Market.

-----
Salama Halal Meat
604 Geary St, San Francisco, CA

Oasis Market
3045 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA 94609

[Ruth Lafler]

Right. I know Oasis sells whole lambs -- I've seen signs for them at the register. Others should have whole lambs that they haven't cut down yet, even if they don't routinely sell them whole.

[Robert Lauriston]

Here are some more SF halal butchers. There's also Mecca at 530 Ellis.

-----
Nour Halal Meats and Market
476 Eddy Street, San Francisco, CA

Queen of Sheba
1100 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA

Alhambra Halal Meat Company
3111 24th St, San Francisco, CA

[boris_qd]

Any recommendations of one over the other? Otherwise I'll probably head down to Salama Halal Meats (and report back of course).

-----
Salama Halal Meat
604 Geary St, San Francisco, CA

[escargot3]

I happened to notice today that Verbrugge in the East Bay is selling grass-fed local lamb. I can imagine if you put in an order, they'd sell you in bulk.

[boris_qd]

I went to Salama Halal Meats but didn't order anything because I was a bit worried about sanitation. There was a steady pipe leak driping from the ceiling onto the meat counter, the counter person put different meats on the scale without any kind of paper or cleaning and put raw chicken from the scale into a small pool of (lamb goat beef?) blood on the cutting board.

I priced out lamb at Birite (local, nice but way to expensive), duc loi (cheap, ok looking from australia) and Drewes Bros.

We ended up going with Drewes Bros. They were moderatly priced and let us do a custom order before thanksgiving. The lamb was fresh and local (from Sonoma County).

-----
Salama Halal Meat
604 Geary St, San Francisco, CA