East Anglia Andrew's meat feast

Date Published:

20/10/2008

Andrew takes a butchers' round a microbiologist's meat market

Art of Meat was added to the map by danw who said: “This butcher's is run by an ex-microbiologist who hung up his microscope for a meat cleaver. Great pork. Wonderful sausages and a good range of free range chucks.” I went to meet the ex-scientist turned meat master and said cleaver.

Jon has been running Art of Meat for three years now, after quitting the lab. When he took it over, it wasn’t doing that well. By getting back to basics and with high quality and service as his watchwords, he set to turning things around. “I doubled the turnover in the first year.” The business model was a simple one, locally sourced if possible, free-range if possible, and the best quality no matter what. “We're purely retail, almost every other butcher has a wholesale side to their business, this can mean having two grades of meat in the shop.”

With Jon in the shop is master butcher Barry and Paul Cooper, who trained as a chef before changing tack and joining Jon at Art of Meat. A tour of the display counter reveals their own made porchetta, chicken breasts stuffed with sausage meat, and the lads are constantly experimenting with bacon cures, tweaking ingredients and fine tuning process.

Brilliant bangers

Nowhere is this attention to detail and quality more evident than in Jon’s sausages. The pork comes from Dingley Dell in Suffolk where it’s minced in small batches, and the seasonings are made from scratch right there in the shop - rather than bought in from trade suppliers. Jon even grinds the peppercorns fresh for each batch. His Hobson’s Choice (named after the famous Cambridge ostler Thomas Hobson) won favour with Matthew Fort, who knows a thing or too about bangers.

Another sausage Jon and the team make is the Italian Stallion. Made to a recipe from Jon’s Auntie Nelda from Monte Casino, it has a high meat content and is flavoured with fennel seeds, pepper and a little chilli. You can watch Jon and I making them.

One other interesting product Jon stocks is feather blade steak. It's from the front of the cow, just behind the shoulder and packs loads of flavour yet remains cheap. You can watch Jon talking about feather blade here.

Know a great food find near you? Get it on the Map

Back to top