Malady's Meat Market — Local services in Vernon Township

Comments updated 4/5/2015 - see the Department of Agriculture inspection reports. They were inspected in March 2015 and had 7 inspection violations. Many of these are for the very same things they've been written up for many years running.

3/9/12 - Apparently they've now left the business to the kids to run. I haven't seen any grown-ups for some time. Yesterday I went there and I was the only customer. I stood there waiting while two kids were cleaning. They saw me but made no attempt to do anything but clean. The daughter came out, looked at me, picked something up behind the counter and went back in the office. After a couple more minutes the older son looked at me again and then stuck his head in the office. The daughter came back out looking inconvenienced and got my meat. She looked annoyed the entire time through the checkout and gave me a very insincere 'have a nice day.' I'm going to start making an effort to go out to Livingston Meats in Conneaut Lake. I'm fed up with Malady's. I have been a long-time customer of Malady's and enjoy their offerings more than anything otherwise available in Meadville. I have concern that they seem to be altering the way they are processing their meat for a while now. I don't know if they're trying to push more profit into the product but the trim on the steaks has been very disappointing. There has been significantly more fat on the meat than I have ever seen before. More fat left=more weight=more profit. I bought a Delmonico last Friday and all of the top layer of steaks were significantly fatty. I could see the rear two steaks peeking out from behind the paper covering the second layer and they were much nicer. I told their son to give me one of the those. He pulled it out and it was trimmed very nicely. All of the NY Strips in the case were VERY fatty. I'm also not thrilled with their procedure of tearing down the cases a half an hour (or more) before closing time. There have been numerous times where I've gone in and they're pulling the pans out and telling me, "Sorry, we put those back in the cooler already." Well, GET THEM BACK OUT! You're open for another half hour. Save the clean-up for closing. If you want to leave at 6 then close at 5:30. The attitude of late is beginning to get on my nerves. I'm thinking I need to start going out to Livingston's in Conneaut Lake more often but it's tough with my work schedule.

I also found the PA Dept of Agriculture (Food Safety) database and looked up Malady's. On January 14, 2011 they were inspected and had 5 food safety violations. Look it up for yourself under past inspections for...

I won’t go back. The place simply looks dirty, and a very long plastic tablecloth has been cut and haphazardly taped across the bottom 2 feet of of the very long display cooler. Judging by the rusted front of the shorter cooler, that uneven curtain looks better than what’s underneath. Prices are high. Bought corned beef (stupidly!) without looking at the cut side of the piece. The meat was quite literally gray and at least 1/3 fat. I actually threw it away without even tasting it. Bought homemade wieners (actually just hunks of coarse-grind sausage cut apart at uneven lengths — I had to ask because I didn’t recognize them as hot dogs). The casings turned to leather during cooking and the interior had no flavor. Homemade pork sausage was just OK and very fatty. Although the staff was friendly, the whole vibe of the place is, “We really don’t care what you think.” Steaks and roasts looked good but, like the hams (nearly $5/pound, 3 days before Easter), too pricey. I expected an upgrade from grocery stores, but it didn’t happen with either “homemade” food quality or the appearance of hygiene. So...

Ok, let's start by saying the steaks I bought are great. I mean that. The New York strip was well trimmed and cut perfectly. It's a higher quality of steak generally available at the grocery store. Now, how we get to 4 stars is shady scale techniques. They push this steak seasoning. They say "you should try it" and "we'll put it on for you". I declined no less than 3 times. I really didn't want the seasoning but on the 4th ask I relented. She says "we'll put it on the side". OK, whatever. So, then as she weighs my steak there is this separate bag on the scale. She weighed it in with the steak at $18.49 per pound. There was just shy of 4 ounces of this diarrhea dust that I bought for $18.49 per pound. I see why they push it. It's an extra $3.75 or so to the price of the steaks. It wont break me. It just bugs me because I didn't really want it. Great...