Madani Halal

Last weekend we visited Madani Halal. The squeamish might want to check out our many, many posts on street art.

In 1996, Imran Uddin left a career in advertising to take over the family business, a small halal slaughterhouse in a former auto repair shop.  Every day customers from Ozone Park select from among the pigeons, squab, duck, roosters, and other fowl as well as the sheep and goats --- all ethically raised in Pennsylvania and Texas, and all destined to die within a day of arriving in Queens.

Over an informative hour, Imran recited the prayer that's said before the animal's throat is slit and showed us where, according to halal law, the sheep and goats are given some food and water before they're killed. He spoke passionately about the way his customers hang out and talk while waiting for their meat, sharing views and recipes, and positively beamed as a father helped his young son pick out a chicken for dinner that night. It's a cliche to talk about how Americans prefer their food faceless, prepackaged and uniform, just as it's quickly becoming a cliche to claim that you're not really into food unless you kill it yourself (even Martha Stewart brags about having taken down a turkey with her own hands). We've never heard anyone talk about how moving a trip to the slaughterhouse could be. But it can, and it was.