Noah Mayrand grew up in a Lebanese-Italian family that celebrated special occasions with homemade kibbeh and spanakopita. As a kid, his love of eating developed into a desire to do his own cooking. But despite being raised on the Island in a food-focused clan, young Mayrand was not a natural in the kitchen.
As a teenager, Mayrand had one of his first jobs in the food world working for Kim and Jim O’Connor’s Vineyard-based catering company ChefWorks. “There’s a story Jim likes to tell where he sent me to the herb garden to pick mint for a garnish,” Mayrand recalled. “I just picked a bunch of weeds for an hour. I came back with nothing edible, and he was like, ‘What are you doing?’”
Despite the rocky start, Mayrand was learning. He continued cooking through high school. After college, he moved to California’s Bay Area and got a job at the now-closed Beast and the Hare restaurant. It was at this meat-focused spot in the Mission District that he learned to butcher a variety of whole animals.
“They taught me how to break down a rabbit, which is one of the animals that’s most related to other mammal structures, as far as bones and joints and everything,” Mayrand said. They butchered about a dozen rabbits every week for the restaurant’s famous rabbit ragù.
Living and eating in his diverse new home also provided its own culinary education. “After cooking for so many years on the Island, you realize how stale food is in the Northeast,” he said. “Everybody wants halibut, which is the most tasteless fish you eat. You need a sauce, you need an herb, you need something. And then there’s lobster. Yes, it’s sweet, it’s delicious, but you can get sick of it quickly.”
In the Bay Area, however, the world opened up to an adventurous eater looking to branch out. “San Francisco is closer to Asia, and it’s closer to South America,” he said. “There are people that just came from Mexico, and they’ve been cooking this birria their whole life. Then you realize what real Spanish and Mexican and Guatemalan food is and then the subtleties between each, like, ‘Oh, Salvadorans, they make pupusas, what’s a pupusa?’ And then you go down that whole rabbit hole.”
He also continued to explore and to learn more about whole-animal cooking. When his friends in California wanted to have a backyard party, he suggested roasting a whole pig. Using knowledge he’d gained at Beast and the Hare, he bought a pig from a nearby farm and made his first attempt – a success in the sense that his friends enjoyed the result but, to Mayrand, there was room for improvement. The meat didn’t cook very evenly, he said, and the roasting process was longer than necessary. He knew he could improve.
Since moving back to the Island in 2015, he’s worked on the technique – among a host of other projects. He’s a well water filter technician. He’s a caretaker for properties around the Island. And, in 2022, Mayrand started Tisbury Oyster Company, an oyster farm in Vineyard Haven’s Lagoon Pond. He also caters raw bars with his oysters, shucking for partygoers. When we spoke, his wife, fashion designer Angela Sison, was due to give birth to their first child any day.
As they waited for the baby to arrive, Mayrand roasted a pig, in part because he still had the time to dedicate to the all-day project and in part to have plenty of leftover meat in the freezer for the time spent taking care of the new mom and new baby.
The process of roasting a pig begins many months ahead of time. First, he must order the pig, which Mayrand has occasionally sourced through Island farmer Jo Douglas’s business, Fork to Pork. In that case, the pig comes to him slaughtered and gutted.
But he sometimes slaughters his own pig, as he did at the end of the summer. Friend and farmer Mason Fischer of Flat Point Farm in West Tisbury raises pigs and Mayrand chooses the one he wants. He shoots it, then hangs it up from a wooden frame to bleed it and gut it. Then Mayrand and Fischer, who often helps out, boil a large vat of water to scald the pig. This helps loosen the tough outer layer of skin and hair. The pig gets hung back up on the frame and Mayrand and Fischer scrape off this outer layer with a bullnose knife, which has a long, slightly curved blade and a rounded tip. Next, they power-wash it to get the dirt out of its ears and all the other nooks and crannies.
How does Mayrand feel about this hands-on – and what some might consider gruesome – slaughtering and cleaning process?
“I think it’s very natural,” he said. “It keeps you connected to the earth, it keeps you connected to your food. It’s how people have eaten for thousands of years.”
Once the animal is prepped, he deep-freezes it, then thaws it, which wards off food-borne illness. Then he puts another massive vat into the back of his truck and hoists the pig into it. A day before the roast, he makes the brine right in the vat in his truck bed. “This year it was red wine vinegar, brown sugar, cane sugar, a couple of lemons, black peppercorns, water, salt – lots of kosher salt – some molasses, fennel, and coriander.”
He drives it carefully over to the site of the party and sets up the spit around 9 a.m. The pig is threaded onto the spit and secured with metal cords. He builds a wood fire underneath and tends to it all day. Friends begin to arrive in the evening and Mayrand gets to socialize while monitoring the progress.
Part of the appeal of the pig roast party, Mayrand said, is in the attempt to recreate his own childhood. “I just remember all the hippie parties my parents took me to, the bonfires, the gatherings of people from all walks of life, coming together in a joyous occasion at the beach, or on a farm, in a field. And then all of us kids, just complete mayhem.” He loved getting to know the neighbors and fellow Islanders who were all “going through this Vineyard upraising” together.
Throughout the cooking process, he spritzes the pig with a mixture of apple cider vinegar or champagne vinegar, water, salt, and sugar. The pig is done when it reaches about 155 degrees, but a skilled cook looks for other signs as well. “Your knife can tap the skin and it makes that nice sound,” he said.
When it’s ready, he gets to feed his friends and their kids, who pause the mayhem long enough for dinner. The tradition continues.
This article appears in Fall-Winter Home & Garden 2026-2027.