Old-School Meat Guys Still Doing It Their Way
Bud’s Custom Meats, Angelo’s Smokehouse and Angelo’s Wine Country Deli are among the last bastion of small- scale, family-operated meat shops in the North Bay, carrying on the long tradition of the art and craft of butchering and creating specialty meat products.
I visited Matt Gamba, owner of Bud’s, and Angelo Ibleto, owner of both Angelo’s locations, to discover how they got to now, where they are headed and what keeps them doing what they do—the old-school way.
BUD’S CUSTOM MEATS, PENNGROVE
What would you do if you fell off the roof of your business on a workday and broke your hip?
Get in your car and take your wife to the Petaluma Airporter, then drive yourself to the hospital, of course!
At least that’s what you would do if you were Matt Gamba, owner of Bud’s Custom Meats. That’s exactly what he did. And once he arrived at the hospital, Matt underwent surgery to repair his broken hip, drove himself home and showed up for work the next day.
Because that’s the way the work at Bud’s Custom Meats gets done.
Matt’s father was Bud Gamba, the namesake founder of the business that opened in 1975. Bud’s father and grandfather had owned slaughterhouses and sausage-making operations in their native Italy, which makes Matt a fourth-generation master butcher. He’s been in the business pretty much since birth. Matt now leads a large staff dedicated to butchering, aging, cutting, smoking and processing meat.
According to Matt, there were once around 35 butcher shops operating in our area to cut locally raised meats. As far as he knows, there are now only three or four.
Bud Gamba was born in Healdsburg, but raised mostly in Colorado, returning to the North Bay after a stint in the US Army. He began his career in butchering at local Safeway stores, moving to Petaluma in 1964 to open a location for Purity Market (now Petaluma Market). Bud’s wife, Marcy, was also in the meat business. “Mom was a meat wrapper at Safeway on the east side of Petaluma, when meat wrapper was a very good job and respected for its craft ,” Matt said.
“I started going to work sometimes with my dad when I was about 5, and had the run of the store. Eventually, I rode my bike to Purity and rode around bugging shopkeepers all over Petaluma,” he recalled.
Bud always wanted to have his own ranch and earned extra money to put towards that goal by doing custom meat cutting and processing out of the family’s garage, developing friendships with local ranchers that last to this day. These “side jobs” grew beyond his expectations, and soon became Bud’s main business.
Bud’s services included traveling to farms and ranches to perform on-site slaughter, transporting the animals back to his shop for processing. Matt continues to provide mobile slaughtering, one of the very few still offering this service to small farms and ranches in our area. Matt explained that, traditionally, most local farmers would raise a few animals, primarily to feed their own families, but now meat animal production is much more concentrated on fewer, larger ranches, and those animals often have to be transported long distances for processing.
Back at the shop, Matt and his team process all sorts of meats, including hogs, lamb, goats, beef, poultry and sheep. They also handle game such as deer and elk, and even the occasional bear and moose.
Bud’s also craft s delicious “value added” meat products offered for sale in its extensive market. The first products Matt created were sausage and jerky, made with recipes he says he developed by listening to customers’ preferences of spices and flavors over the years.
You’ll also find a wide array of other items including smoked hams, pepperoni sticks, whole turkeys, ground goat and goat shoulder bones, wild boar, ground buffalo and buffalo filet mignon, frogs’ legs, rabbit, alligator, ground elk and elk steaks, quail, venison stew meat and huge bones that have been smoked for your canine companion’s pleasure.
What’s the next chapter for Bud’s? Matt’s daughter, Jennifer Marie Gamba, grew up in the business, working at the shop during summers. She recently earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Davis, and is headed to Boston College to pursue her master’s in the field. Matt says that Jennifer’s plan is to work with autistic children or in animal therapy, potentially creating a center at the Gamba ranch. We think that Grandpa Bud would be proud.
ANGELO’S SMOKEHOUSE, PETALUMA, AND ANGELO’S WINE COUNTRY DELI, SONOMA
Angelo Ibleto grew up in the Cinque Terre region of Italy, lucky man. Having four sons and two daughters, Angelo’s parents supported the family through farming: growing potatoes, wheat, beans and corn, as well as raising dairy cows. As soon as he was old enough, which wasn’t very old at all, it was Angelo’s job to help with the cows. He also learned how to make sausages—a tradition he carries on still today, earning him the moniker the Sausage King.
Angelo’s brother Arturo (Art), locally known as the Pasta King, was the first of the Ibleto brothers to emigrate to Sonoma County, in 1949. After he purchased a business that included a butcher shop, he learned the trade. Eventually, he sent for his little brother, Angelo, when the latter was a tender 29 years old.
Angelo had worked as a customs police officer in Italy, but he says that he initially arrived in San Francisco at 9pm, and was working at Art’s Ibleto Meats by 10 the next morning. He clearly took to the craft, and in 1986 he opened his own meat shop, Angelo’s Smokehouse.
A hodgepodge of weathered light green buildings at 2700 Adobe Road in Petaluma, Angelo’s feels and smells like an Old-World meat processing plant, and rightfully so. Angelo and his team make jerky, sausages, salami, smoked ham and bacon at the shop, selling these housemade treats alongside salsas, rubbing spices, imported olives and peppers, as well as an astounding array of pickled items.
On one visit, as he gave me a tour of the compact plant, Angelo asked if I was hungry, to which I, of course, replied, yes! Suddenly, a flat pan appeared, and Angelo whipped out a knife, cutting for me a wedge of the best focaccia on Earth. He doesn’t sell it, so you have to be a family member or someone he wants to share with to taste this special treat. On another visit, this consummate host offered me a serving of porchetta stew that he had made for his family’s lunch. Divine.
To see Angelo walk among his hanging smoked sausages, turkeys and hams, cuddling and fondling them as he goes, is an experience like no other. The Sausage King boasts of visits from Huey Lewis, Tippy Hedron and Sophia Loren, who he says rode on the back of his motorcycle once to get through heavy traffic.
“To be successful,” Angelo advises, “you need three things: the best meat, the best spices and to know what to do with them. So,” he continues, “because I didn’t have enough to do, I bought a spice company a couple of months ago.”
Angelo also offers full-service catering, including whole-pig roasts, and was the official pig smoker for the exclusive Russian River enclave, Bohemian Grove, for several years.
Angelo also operates Angelo’s Wine Country Deli just north of Cornerstone and across Arnold Drive from Gloria Ferrer Caves and Vineyards in Sonoma. You will know the place by the red and white cow statue on top. At the deli location, Angelo offers his famous jerky (giving out free samples!), as well as fabulous sandwiches made with Angelo’s meats such as pastrami, prosciutto, pork roast, roast beef, smoked turkey, salami and sausage, along with various salads and cheeses.
What’s next for Angelo’s? Angelo’s daughter, Angela, grew up in the business and now oversees both shops. Father and daughter both say they expect that she will take over the sausage making, smoking and the whole shebang someday. But don’t hold your breath for the passing of the torch. Even at 84, Angelo shows little sign of slowing down. On a recent visit, he brought out a string of his handmade sausages for me to taste, calling them “the sexiest sausages in the world.”
