A knife sunk deep into a red slab of meat in the Redmond Smokehouse.

With quick, strong, accurate slices the piece was cut into chunks of scarlet and white. A carve down the side, a jab deep into muscle, a chop of fat. Flip. Bury knife deep. Slide down. Separate muscle. Repeat.

Every day, the Redmond Smokehouse churns out rows of marbled beef steaks, pork chops, smoked turkeys, bacon, flavored sausages, pepperoni and jerky in an old-fashioned butcher shop that dates back to the 1940s.

For customers and employees, the store has some of the best meat available and is a connection to family and to the past.

“It’s just the way they process their meats,” said Sharry Runge, a customer who regularly shops at the smokehouse. “They have a great history, the right seasonings, compared to a lot of the slaughterhouses.”

Runge and her husband were the general contractors who helped remodel the smokehouse around 25 years ago, she said, and mentioned that the shop has been a part of Redmond’s history.

Amanda Guthrie, manager of the Redmond Smokehouse, said that this history and family connections are what often bring people back.

“It’s a very family-oriented business,” she said.

In the backroom, she said, the Luna family has been butchering the meat for three generations while Guthrie herself got involved because her mother worked at the shop.

In high school, Guthrie began working at the smokehouse part time to make a little extra money and was intrigued by the marketing and product side of the business and decided to stick around.

While the original history of the smokehouse is a little hazy, the business was originally named the Redmond Lockers & Custom Meat and was built next to the train tracks to serve those who worked the railroads and the surrounding Redmond community.

Guthrie said the business eventually passed from the Abbas family to the Moores, who owned it until Justin Ellis bought the business in 2019.

Runge said the Moores worked really hard to get the seasonings just right and that she still shops at the smokehouse because of the way the shop has continued to make the meat.

“The only reason I go there all the time is because they have absolutely the best meat ever,” she said. “It’s just the way they process (it). There’s no question.”

Plus, she added, they’re just good people and have a great crew.

“They’re very congenial and they do what they say they’re going to do,” Runge said.

Guthrie said she’s also seen a trend of younger customers coming in to buy the same handmade meats their grandparents would cook.

“We’re getting a younger generation where they’re like ‘this is what my grandpa had. I want that taste. I want that flavor, not what my parents were making from the store,’” Guthrie said. “They want that true old-fashioned taste.”

Guthrie said they don’t add any dyes or anything to change the look of the meats and that they cut their steaks fresh every day which makes them taste better

Runge said she recently picked up her smoked turkey from the shop and has been buying their turkeys for years.

Ellen Phillips, another customer, said she goes to the store because they have very good meat and buys her Thanksgiving turkey from them every year as well.

When asked why the turkey was better than other places, she had one response: “it just is.”

“I like the store,” she said, “that’s all there is to say.”

While most of the meats come from local producers, the organic, non-GMO and never frozen turkeys that fill the Smokehouse’s cold storage every Thanksgiving all come straight from the Diestel Family Ranch in Sonoma, California, and are smoked in house.

“Every once in a while we do have to outsource out of Oregon, but generally when we do that it’s because of it being better quality,” Guthrie said.

Guthrie said the turkeys usually sell out every year because the families are able to taste the difference between their turkeys and others.

Additionally, the butcher shop is split between cutting large cuts of meat to sell in their small retail shop and doing custom meat processing for farmers and ranchers to sell at their own businesses. Guthrie said this split is one of the main reasons why the old-fashioned business has stuck around for so long.

Guthrie said they also have specialty jerky or pepperoni flavors every week but their cranberry walnut sausage is the most popular as they head into Thanksgiving. The meats can only be bought at the smokehouse, she added.

The top sellers are likely their jerky or pepperoni, Guthrie said, but their steaks and freshly-cut meats are next in line.

“Customers usually come back year to year because of the quality that we have brought to their holiday meals,” she said.