Looks a bit macabre when I write it down, but yesterday I spent the afternoon in the heart of London’s Mayfair cutting up dead things…and I really enjoyed it. Those of you who are avid readers of this blog (that’s all five of you) might remember one of my first posts where I described the butchery masterclass that I’d kindly been given as a present by my cousin and his wife at Xmas. Well, yesterday it was time for me vs the meat…banker vs bovine…trader vs tripe.
Now, every so often I have a crisis of faith and question the integrity of my enthusiasm for food and cooking, restaurants and dining etc. I worry I might have jumped on the bandwagon of all things good-food-related that has swept the country in the last few years. I worry it’s a stance affected by the common popularity of the subject matter. I’ll find myself excitedly describing the delicate flavour of a recently consumed parmesan crisp, and I think, “You fool! You fraud! You great pretender! What on earth are you saying? Are you really getting excited about some baked cheese? Are you really that into food, or is it just a great big facade?”
I’d hazard that it takes less than a minute on a butchery course to confirm (or not) one’s commitment to foodie-dom. Confronted with a fresh carcass, knife in hand, about to get elbow deep in flesh focuses the mind dramatically on food, it’s origins/source and our relationship to the processes involved. I found the whole thing fascinating, it confirmed my interest in the subject and at Allens they made it a thoroughly enjoyable experience too.
Allens is an institution and I recommend a visit for any foodie, even if not taking a masterclass. Housed in a beautiful listed building, the inside is very little changed from the past (listed status requirements) and it is a great example of a functioning traditional butchers. There is a little produce on display nowadays in the newly installed refrigerated cabinets but most walk-in customer’s requests are still brought up from the basement and cut to order there and then. Amazingly, the shop is staffed 18 hours a day (the first shift starts at 3am!) and from this tiny little hub they provide quality meat to the majority of the top hotels and restaurants in London.
Clothed in our butchers coats and equipped with chainmail gloves, we gathered around the butchers table in the centre of the floor while master butcher Glen introduced us to the session. Consummate skill and experience shone through in spadefuls as he skillfully turned a whole lamb into beautifully neat cuts of meat, whilst calmly talking us through everything he was doing.
Slightly daunted by the thought of attempting the same, I was a little relieved to find that we’d start out on just a chicken instead, after Glen had taken us through the correct steps. Armed with hugely sharp knifes and under the watchful eye of Michael, another master butcher we set to work. Although not as speedily, certainly not as efficiently and mainly due to the excellent instruction, we all eventually managed to get to something resembling breasts, thighs, wings and legs.
Next up was a whole oxtail (easy!), swiftly followed by the tricky feather-blade steaks, which required the removal of lots of gristle before being cut into steaks (for a video of one of the Allen’s staff doing this properly, click here.) Finally, there was the French-trimmed middle neck of lamb which were the most rewarding, most fiddly and most frustrating (video here).
Several things impressed me during our hour-and-a-half with Glen and his colleagues, but foremost was the skill and ease with which these chaps move a knife around the joints and bones of these cuts as they produce incredibly neat pieces of meat; just insanely skilled. A fantastic and informative way to spend a couple of hours, especially when considering the amount of meat you get to take home too (in nice bags, with individual recipes for each cut of meat). And all our hard work fully justified a lazy late-lunch at Scott’s across the road…
Allens of Mayfair
117 Mount Street
London W1K 3LA
0207 499 5831
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