🛒 Episode 15 — Alfred Holtzhoy | 🥩☕️🌶️🥪 The History of El Rancho Market
Chopping It Up with Keith Saarloos · Released September 18, 2025 · Santa Ynez Valley, California
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About this conversation
From a shuttered “Buy Wise” in 1966 to the beating heart of the Santa Ynez Valley, this one has it all. Alfred Holtzhoy takes us inside his family’s immigrant-to-owner story—dad a German-trained master butcher who turned a small shop into El Rancho Market, the place where tri-tip became currency, the butcher counter stayed alive, and a quick egg run still takes two hours because you see everyone you know. We dig into the Valley as it was (no stoplights, farm boys, Danish Days), the genius of fresh-squeezed OJ (that FMC juicer!), make-your-own nut butter, the birth of the Jordan sandwich (yes, it’s real and it’s #1), Mississippi Caviar lore, house-roasted coffee on a Loring, and why Hatch chile season now feels like a holiday. It’s the history of a grocery that became a community—part butcher, part café, part living room—and a love letter to the people who kept it all cooking. 🛒
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Saarloos + Sons archive host Keith Saarloos. Context photograph; not a portrait of the guest or a photograph of this recording.
