By Nancy Brumback, Contributing Writer
Business name: Lowe's Variety & Meat Shop
Address: 255 West Main St., Northborough
Owner: Tom Lowe
Contact information: 508-393-6594, www.lowesmeatmarket.com
You offer a broad selection of ready-to-grill products?
“We'se always had a wide variety of marinated products – beef kabobs in a house marinade, three flavors of chicken kabobs, three types of beef tips, four types of chicken tips and Greek marinated lamb tips,” said Tom Lowe, who has owned Lowe's Variety & Meat Shop in Northborough store since 1986. His grandparents started the original market in Westborough in 1951.
“This year we'se added swordfish kabobs in cilantro-lime or burgundy wine marinade. We have pork kabobs in barbecue sauce and beef kabobs in Texas barbecue sauce. Marinated cooked shrimp in zesty Italian and marinated uncooked shrimp in sweet and sour Asian sauce are also new. You can put the cooked shrimp on the grill for about three minutes, just enough to heat them. The uncooked ones are large shrimp, eight to 12 in a pound, already split and deveined but with the shells still on to keep them juicier so you can grill them for about eight minutes.”
And you sell fresh meats that are good on the grill?
“We make six kinds of sausages–sweet Italian, hot Italian, super hot Italian, garlic and cheese, sweet Italian turkey sausage and sun-dried tomato chicken sausage. We make them in the store every week,” Lowe said.
“We have the three main types of steak??”strip, ribeye and T-bone or Porterhouse, plus sirloin tip steaks and New York sirloins. You can pick them out of the case or we will cut your steaks to order. We'se added USDA prime strip steaks and prime ribeye steaks, just a step above our regular choice steaks. We recommend you grill them on medium so you don's overcook them.
“If you want something custom cut or prepared, just call in advance. We do a lot of chicken barbecues, splitting the whole chickens for customers. We even do special-order whole pigs.”
To round out the barbecue you have side dishes?
“We have quite a few cold salads??”potato, macaroni, Italian tomato, cheese tortellini, coleslaw. We make a lot of fruit platters, and have salad ingredients in our produce section.
“We also have our homemade egg salad, ham salad, chicken salad. One of the most popular salads we sell is chicken, cranberry and walnut.
“If it's too hot to cook, we make our own meatballs you can just throw in the microwave.”
What is your barbecue freezer pack?
“There are several different varieties and price categories, which we post on our website, www.lowesmeatmarket.com. We'sl package the meat the way you want it for your family, however many chicken breasts to a package, hamburger in the size packages you need. When you buy 10 lbs. of hamburger, you don's want to have to repackage it. The prices run from $69 to $129. The packages are all labeled, and if you want us to freeze it first, we can do that.”
Lowe's is open Monday through Saturday, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The service meat counter opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. other days.
