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'Live Poultry Fresh Killed' sign on the chopping block as Cambridge poultry place flies the coop
By adamg on Wed, 08/04/2021 - 11:06am
Wicked Local Cambridge reports Mayfair Poultry has closed and is auctioning off its famous sign - which advertises something the company has not actually offered in a long time - East Cambridge gentrifiers just didn't actually want freshly killed chickens that they have to take home and pluck.
Neighborhoods:
Ad:
Comments
Sounds like it might just be the most prudent business decision
The Boston Meat Market
Ugh, that place is such a... what's the word?
If you still want that live poultry experience…
…there are places in Chinatown. One is at 54 Kneeland between Harrison & Tyler.
Bummer
I go there almost every Saturday to get chicken for the week and it's been a neighborhood staple since times immemorial. Not just the sign, but the staff are great, the chicken is really good and they always have the things that you can't find at the supermarket.
I remember the fire back in the '90s and how bad that smelled so I don't reserve any nostalgia for the processing plant, but it's just another slow cut in the fabric of the neighborhood as it heads off into a sterilized future.
Mayflower
Typo - it's Mayflower Poultry, not Mayfair.
MayFlower, Get your Fresh? Poultry
The last time we bought one of their "fresh" turkeys (a long held and insisted upon tradition in our family) for Thanksgiving, it was frozen solid when we took it out of the fridge for Thanksgiving. That was 10 years ago.
The pizza and cranberry sauce was delicious.
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Just remembered….
…a tale oft told by my grandmother who grew up down Cambridge Street from Mayflower. Occasionally, a chicken or two would go awol and end up wandering in the neighborhood. A rooster ended up in the backyard of the building my great-grandfather owned and where they lived on the first floor. He fed it, brought it into the house to the delight of his children, and had it sleep in one of the garages so it wouldn’t disturb people at dawn. He even gave it a name “Come Here C’mon” which is about all he could say to it in English. All was well until the fattened rooster ended up on the dinner table several months later. My grandmother and her siblings left the table and refused to eat.
A good home
Hopefully that guy who bought West Roxbury's waving chicken will buy this chicken too!
A dying flock
Mayflower was not the only one of its kind. Forty years ago, around 1981, I went wandering through the North End, taking photos of interesting architecture. On Fulton Street I found Menorah Products Co., purveyors of Kosher poultry. The store was closed for the day (maybe it was a Saturday?), but through the windows I could see the live hens inside. One of the last relics of the old Jewish North End.
To prove it was a cosmopolitan neighborhood, its immediate abutter was a distributor of Italian pork products.
The entire street is high-priced condos today.