Butcher aiming to slice away the competition

NASHUA – Nicolas Stiles will need his knives and his skills to be sharp Tuesday at the Northeast Regional Finals of a national meat-cutting challenge.

Stiles, the head butcher at Nashua’s Texas Roadhouse, will compete against 17 other meat cutters from throughout New England and New York for a chance to move one step closer to the $20,000 grand prize.

This will be the fourth year Stiles will compete in the contest, which aims to find the top meat cutter within the Texas Roadhouse chain of 320 restaurants.

Three challengers from the region will advance to the semi-finals in February aiming to get to the national competition, which will be April 12, 2010, during the Texas Roadhouse national convention for owners and Managing Partners in New York City.

“Along with the grand prize, the meat cutters who make it to New York are basically treated like a rock star for the entire week,” said Shawn Johnson, managing partner of the Nashua restaurant.

Stiles is hopeful: “In the past three years, I have never finished out of the Top 3, but I think this could be my year.”

The contest will take place at the Consolidated Beverage warehouse in Auburn, Mass. To keep the meat fresh, the cutting takes place in a freezer, which is kept at 38 degrees. It will be cold, but at least it should be roomy.

“I remember the first year the event was held in one of the restaurants, and it was a hassle because no one had room to really move,” Stiles said.

For the contest, each participant receives 30-40 pounds of beef and must cut two sirloins, 1 filet and one rib eye.

Meat cutters are judged on quality, yield and speed in the timed “cut-off.” The winner is the cutter who yields the most steaks, with the highest quality cut in the least amount of time.

Out of the three cuts that he needs to complete during the contest, Stiles has a clear favorite.

“I definitely enjoy cutting tenderloin a lot better than anything else,” Stiles said. “The other areas can be a different from week to week based on the product that comes in.”

Stiles, who has been head meat cutter at the Nashua Texas Roadhouse for almost four years, has a history with the man that is his biggest competition each year in the regionals.

“I expect that Agusto (Scoponi) out of Everett, Mass., will again be one of the ones to beat – and he was the person I trained under when I started,” Stiles said.

Stiles has consistently been the fastest of the contestants over the past three years, but plans on changing his strategy for this year’s contest.

“Being fast hasn’t tended to work in my favor the past few years,” Stiles said. “This year, I am going to make sure I don’t miss anything.”

The big change for this year’s contest is that each meat cutter will bring their own meat to cut from their individual restaurant. In past years, the cutters drew numbers and then picked the meat they wanted to cut via a draft.

The contest is one of a few major competitions the Texas Roadhouse puts on to recognize its top employees and restaurants nationally. The Real-Bar contest is held nationally and helps showcase the best run restaurants throughout the country based on speed of service and overall atmosphere. Texas Roadhouse also features a national line-dancing contest for its waitresses.

In 2007, the Nashua location won the Real-Bar contest and was recognized as one of the nation’s top Texas Roadhouses. The Nashua branch also conducts multiple contests and incentive programs for its specific branch.

On top of being a contest, each round of the National Meat Cutters Challenge serves as a workshop and conference for the cutters to help improve everyday work.

“I think getting together with everyone each year is good,” Stiles said. “We get to talk about different things and work on things that are giving us trouble.

“For the meat cutters, we all want to see each other do a good job so the managers who watch tend to do most of the trash talking.”

Johnson agrees.

“It’s fun for the managers to talk smack to each other and really hype up our cutter,” he said. “We all believe that our guy is the best.”

Despite losing the past three years, Stiles is staying positive.

“It’s really any cutter’s game, you could do fantastic one year and have a bad cut the next,” Stiles said. “I’m optimistic that I can take it this year, though.”

Ryan Leach can be reached at 594-6523 or rleach@nashuatelegraph.com.