Stemmler Meats & Cheese (Heidelberg)

Decent meat, great pepperettes

Stemmler’s is one of those increasingly rare family run businesses. The three Stemmler brothers run the place now although Gerry and Mary Anne are still there almost everyday — Mary Anne keeping the front of the store shipshape and Gerry happily carving up meat behind the big glass window.
I have been a customer of Stemmlers for over 20 years from when they were in the little store beside Forwells Variety to their big shiny new European style store a little farther along the Lobsinger Line. The new store provides an exceptional array of fresh and processed meats along with cheeses, ready-​to-​eat chickens and other meals, fresh fruit and vegetables, preserves, specialty sauces, spices, baked goods, maple syrup, eggs and much more, most of it of local origin. You can also watch everything being carved or made behind big glass windows. This is probably not a good place to bring any card carrying PETA vegetarian friends or family.
They take custom orders on fresh meat and you can get your steaks cut to your preferred thickness. Insider tip — if you are looking for smaller chickens to rotisserie or grill as halves on the barbecue, ask as they have them in the walk-​in cooler — the ones on display are usually the big roasters. Do be afraid to ask for anything — this is still an old fashioned butcher shop and one of the guys working behind the big glass windows would be happy to carve your meat up whichever way you would like it. I always buy fresh as it is a short walk from home but they also have freezer orders. You can special order hams, turkeys and geese for special holiday dinners. Several thousand turkeys take flight from Stemmler’s to land on dinner tables for dinner every Thanksgiving.
The Black Forest Ham is among their many award winning products and they also have several varieties of summer sausage. The sausages are exceptional and come in many varieties — our favourites are the maple smoked (sweet) and spicy salsarica (spicy). Fantastic on the BBQ. If you or your kids eat hot dogs you must try the no-​nitrate turkey wieners (in the freezer cabinet) — a staple in our house. Another favourite are the turkey breakfast sausages also found in the freezer case although the fresh garlic breakfast sausage found in the fresh meat display are pretty tasty too. You can buy delicious fresh sliced bacon from the cold meat counter (thick sliced and not as watery as grocery store bacon). You can buy whole slabs of bacon if you would like to slice it up yourself. Also check out the pre-​packaged back, peameal, double smoked, Montréal smoked, apple cinnamon and pepper bacon. The pepper bacon is fantastic in a BLT. For the health conscious they also have no-​nitrate and turkey bacon (another family fave) in the frozen food cabinet. What can you say bad about a place with almost ten types of bacon available? There is a range of other no-​nitrate and gluten free processed meats and other products. Also excellent beef jerky and pepperettes if you are looking for something to snack on for the drive home.
Overall, a little more pricey than the meat counter at the grocery store but leaps and bounds ahead in quality. Worth the trip to Heidelberg.