A different beast
Way back in the mists of time – well, the 1970s – when Linda McCartney was synonymous with Wings rather than sausages, and tofu could have been a martial art for all we knew, I’d trot along to buy the week’s meat with my mum. After a brief chat with John the butcher, we’d head home with our paper-wrapped pork chops and mince and, occasionally, a steak to have with our three veg. Back then, John’s store had pride of place in the row of local shops, but zoom forward to today, and the traditional independent butcher is far less in evidence. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is due a) to the rise in vegetarian and plantbased eating and/or b) to the dominance of the supermarket and mass-produced meat. You might also suspect that we’ve come to prefer our meat clinically packaged as, say, burgers - preferring to forget that those patties once had ears and a spleen.
However, what if we told you that the independent butcher is alive and well, and drawing on the past to evolve in new and exciting ways? That there’s a growing interest in more unusual cuts of meat? And that, far from viewing the meat and plant-based diet as diametrically opposed, some homegrown butchers and chefs consider the approach and ethos of
