The Butcher does not accept reservation. Call for charcuterie, sausage or cheese platters, sandwich trays and other catering needs.

About Cochon Butcher

It’s a butcher shop, a sandwich counter and a wine bar. Inspired by old-world meat markets, Butcher specializes in house made meats, terrines and sausages, the fresh cuts are handpicked and ready-to-cook items available daily.
The Butcher does not accept reservation. Call for charcuterie, sausage or cheese platters, sandwich trays and other catering needs.


National Outstanding Chef Award
Donald Link is a finalist for the National Outstanding Chef Award 2012 by the James Beard Foundation

Chef Donald Link has been chosen as a finalist in the James Beard Foundation Awards Outstanding Chef U.S. category! Chef Link joins a superior group of accomplished chefs from around the country: David Chang, Gary Danko, Daniel Humm, Paul Kahan and Nancy Silverton. In true New Orleans fashion, the celebrating goes on – New Orleans is represented in several other categories, as well. Emeril’s was honored with an Outstanding Wine Program nomination. Times picayune writer Brett Anderson was nominated for his writing in the Environment, Food Politics, and Policy category. Brett Martin, a new New Orleans resident, received a nod for his Humor article in GQ. And four fellow New Orleans chefs were nominated for Best Chef: South—Justin Devillier, John Harris, Tory McPhail and Alon Shaya, in addition to Sue Zemanick, up for Rising Star Chef of the Year.

The James Beard Foundation Awards recognize outstanding achievement within the food and wine industry and are considered to be the “Oscars of the food world.” The winners will be announced live from New York on May 7, 2012.


Times Picayune
Top Ten Restaurants
Brett Anderson
Since its opening in 2006, Cochon, and its more casual appendage, Cochon Butcher, has inspired countless chefs, both locally and nationally, to harness the raw power hidden in the hoofs and crannies of whole hogs. I have yet to visit a restaurant that deploys this power as artfully as Cochon. Yes, the collaboration between James-Beard-award-winning chefs Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski (see also Herbsaint and Peche) counts fried livers, fried pig’s ears and bacon and fried oyster sandwiches as staples. So Cochon is in no danger of overvaluing subtlety. But neither is it in danger of falling prey to a sensibility that values shocking diners more than pleasing them, an unappetizing glitch in the strategies of too many American restaurants run by chefs less mature than Cochon’s. The restaurant’s food is rich, but the story it tells about Cajun and Southern cooking hasn’t grown tired because it’s also balanced. The balance is in the details of each plate, where all manner of produce, herbs and pickles keep the robust cooking in check, and on the menu as a whole, which includes arguably New Orleans’ best seafood court-bouillon and an arsenal of vegetable side dishes (say yes to the squash stewed with okra and tomatoes) that are alone worth the price of admission. Yes, the dining room is loud. Yours would be too if you knew how to make a ham hock sing.


Times Picayune
Pastry Chefs Still Getting Creative with King Cakes
By Susan Langenhennig

Seeing the first king cakes arrive in my neighborhood grocery store last weekend reminded me of a quip a friend made last year about plain king cakes, the unfilled kind. Only in New Orleans, he said, could you call something coated with frosting, dusted with sugar and baked with a plastic baby inside “plain” with a straight face. Each year, bakeries, cafes, restaurants and doughnut shops up the ante on what goes in or on a king cake…. It’s hard not to marvel at the variations. This year, bananas show up in at least three filled varieties that I’ve come across: the Elvis at Cochon Butcher… As Carnival 2013 kicks off, I checked in with a few places to see what else is coming out of the oven. Cochon Butcher With layers of chocolate peanut butter; apple and Creole cream cheese; and lemon doberge, pastry chef Rhonda Ruckman’s king cakes almost call out for a new hybrid dessert category. Her most over-the-top flavor is an homage to another sort of royalty: The “Elvis” is filled with bananas, peanut butter, house-cured bacon and topped with toasted marshmallow. The Elvis is sold daily by the slice or as a whole cake by special order in advance. And, like last year, Ruckman’s king cakes come with a tiny pink piglet instead of a baby, a cute touch from a restaurant named for the French word for pig.


On The Road: New Orleans
Food Network Cochon
Cochon (with Butcher) has been selected by The Food Network for ‘On The Road: New Orleans.’