Celebrity News

Butcher Pat LaFrieda talks mob and murder threats in new book

Thugs with guns do not scare meat purveyor Pat LaFrieda.

In the new book “Meat: Everything You Need to Know,” LaFrieda, whose family business serves top restaurants from Minetta Tavern to Shake Shack, tells how his partner Mark Pastore had to be “bought” from his previous bosses with mob ties a decade ago.

After being told by one of the wiseguys they “needed Mark back,” LaFrieda said, “I made a deal. I would buy three pallets of poultry a day from his pals in ­exchange for them leaving Mark alone.”

Pastore stayed.

Later, low-level competitors threatened to shoot ­LaFrieda at his West Village warehouse because he was “taking too much business.”

A goon even told LaFrieda: “The only reason it hasn’t happened already is that there are too many guys in white coats walking around here. We’d have to shoot five or six of ’em before we got to the right guy.”

­LaFrieda responded, “When the shooters come, tell them to look for the guy in the blue coat. That’s the color I’ll be wearing.”

To this day, he has always worn a blue coat. “Meat” comes out Sept. 2.