Clancey’s Meats = Doggie Nirvana
August 11th, 2009By Meredeth Barzen
Ask any dog what his version of heaven is—it’ll probably read like this:
“It’s nice people who pet me and tell me I’m a good dog and a big bowl of treats right on the ground so I can snarf them and—IS THAT A RABBIT!!??—Anyway, there are like a million smells all over and—SQUIRRREL!!!—there’s this lady who hand-feeds me little balls of ground beef just because I’m a good dog and she knows I am the best at catching the Frisbee!”
Welcome to Clancey’s.
Kristen Tombers opened the Linden Hills store when one of the only surviving meat markets left in town went up for sale. She thought she’d try to revive the shop by selling only meats from locally raised animals—this was fortunately right as the local food movement really started to catch fire—and named the market after her grandpa’s yellow lab. Clancey the Dog is now going on thirteen years old.
Clancey, the meat market's namesake.
Not only is Clancey’s the absolute, hands-down best place to get bacon in the Twin Cities,* it’s a veritable doggie paradise.
The nice people and the petting? Tombers allows dogs in the store and always gives them lots of attention. The bowl of treats? A cast iron cauldron on the floor filled with Solid Gold Cinnabones—all natural, of course (according to Tombers, “lots of the dogs—even the short ones—go in for a treat on their own.” The smells? It’s a meat store—imagine the sensory overload on your dog’s olfactory system—but don’t worry, germaphobes: all the food is far from the dogs and safely behind glass.
Solid Gold Cinnabones
And the lady with the meat balls? Let’s just say that almost every time we’ve gone in (which is often—we really like bacon), Tombers has come from behind the counter with a very special treat for Sadie the Wonderdoodle—washing her hands very carefully afterward, of course. According to Tombers, this part is pretty popular: “The dogs that know the shop (especially the ones more motivated by food) go pretty crazy knowing that they’re potentially in for a raw meat treat. Most of them pull to the end of the counter to make things happen faster.”
The store also makes a cooked dog food that sounds like you could happily share it with your mutt—all beef shank meat cooked with carrots and celery. You can add just a little to your dog’s dry food to amp up the flavor.
“We are dog-friendly,” Tombers says. “We are also earth-, farm-, food- and people-friendly and are always striving to create a sense of community with our customers. It’s much easier to be in business when the customers can be considered as friends.”
Tombers' yellow lab Lilah--a.k.a. "The luckiest dog in the world."
In case you’re wondering, the luckiest animals in the world are Lilah, a seven-year-old yellow lab, and Schmitty (“a ten-month-old brown tabby kitten who thinks he’s a yellow lab.”) They live with the meat lady. “They are all rescue animals,” says Tombers, “which is kind of funny. I rescued them once. They save me every single day.”
* Official Sidewalk Dog Bacon Preparation: Cooling rack over sheet pan. Oven. 400 degrees. 15-20 minutes. Trust us on this.
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September 7th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
i need to bring my dog in with me more often. we’ve always tied her outside when we come in thinking maybe we misread the “dog friendly” signs.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
[...] Linden Hills is pretty dog-friendly all year round: Many of the main drag’s businesses—like Clancey’s Meats, Bayers Do it Best Hardware, Coffee & Tea Ltd. and Wonderment—not only let dogs in their [...]