I love eating meat, and while some may argue there is no such thing as ethical meat, I personally think so long as you source it responsibly, it is perfectly natural and acceptable for us to eat it. However, I have toyed with vegetarianism quite a bit in the last year, and trialled giving up meat sporadically throughout, simply because I can’t bring myself to buy the flaccid, anonymous cuts from the supermarket, and finding a good, trustworthy butcher isn’t always easy.
A local butcher simply sneered ‘why don’t you go to Dulwich’, when I recently asked if he stocked anything free-range, and questions about cuts and appropriate weights for 2 people have been met with indifference and unhelpfulness from traders at Borough market.
SE pubs, Jam Circus and The Royal Albert boast delicious menus packed with free-range meat from the aptly named WH Wellbeloved Butchers in Deptford, so I went down to sample their wares this weekend. The queue snaking out of the tiny little shop on Saturday afternoon was a pretty good sign.
Signs around the shop indicate a sizeable selection of free-range, locally reared meats, and the guy behind the counter was attentive to what people wanted to do with their meat, and how many people they were cooking for before suggesting the best thing to buy and slicing through joints with the precision of someone who has worked with meat their whole life.
Having refused to pay £9 for a couple of suspicious looking steaks in Sainsbury’s last week, I was happy to pay £10 for two large, freshly cut rib-eyes that were rich and dark with age. The woman in front of me went away with a big bag of diced free-range pork leg for a fiver, and the guy in front of her bought practically a whole pork belly (nicely sliced, of course) and a load of steak for £23, so it struck me as being really good value for money.
Simply seasoned, and fried medium-rare with butter (hey, it’s the weekend), they were delicious too. Don’t believe me, check out the reviews on Urban Path – no less than 5/5 for each one.
Tags: butchers, local shops, se london, steak
March 15, 2010 at 12:50 pm |
hell yeah, I love it! mmm meat. glad you liked deptford deli too — will we see a post on that??
March 15, 2010 at 12:52 pm |
oh yeah, meant to ask you, can I nick the cheese and meat pic from your blog please?!
March 20, 2010 at 1:18 pm |
[...] Saturday ended up being a bit Deptford-centric, with a trip to WH Wellbeloved for steak, and a cheesey, meaty lunch at the Deptford Deli following fellow SE Londoner [...]
May 23, 2010 at 8:42 pm |
[...] steak I barbequed yesterday – that and a further urge to you to try the meaty wares of WH Wellbeloved – but I’ll throw in the recipe for the lemon and herb dressing I served it with, to [...]