Where to eat in the Midlands The butcher of Bromyard

Date Published:

09/06/2008

Andrew heads into the heart of England to meet Anthony Legge, the butcher of Bromyard

As Anthony Legge, a third generation butcher from Bromyard, is guiding me round Legges of Bromyard my eye happens upon a laminated poster. On it is written the distance travelled by some of the key produce sold in his butchers-come-deli. The furthest away on the list is Tyrrell's crisps 17 miles away.

We're in the open plan butchering area to the rear of the shop, where Anthony's staff are processing meat and making sausages. All this is visible to customers in the shop, letting them see exactly how their meat is being handled. To the left of this room is the cold store, again visible from the shop through a glass window, where Anthony's beef is hung and displayed like the crown jewels. Uncle Monty in Withnail and I said 'As a youth I used to weep in butchers shops'. Well I feel like shedding a tear of joy as a tour of Anthony's storeroom reveals some truly stunning looking meat.

Talking shop

I've constantly been impressed during this project how willing people are to let me poke around their business having turned up unannounced. In fact, most good producers and retailers are more than happy to show you how they work because not only is it good business sense, but they're also really passionate about what they do and love talking about it. Anthony's no different.

A farmer's son, he's been a butcher since he left school. He worked for a supermarket but after a while began asking himself 'is there a better way?'. To that end he took on a shop from a butcher who was retiring and set about changing the suppliers for the better. Soon after he began to stock other products such as cheeses and preserves from local producers - and soon saw queues forming out the door of the tiny shop.

At the start of 2007 he moved to his current premises, originally built as a car parts shop, and as his retail like nature abhors a vacuum, expanded the range of produce on offer. Now he gets fish daily from Cornwall; this is important to the local area as he's the only fresh fish counter for 14 miles. There's also cheese from 45 different suppliers in Herefordshire alone. The pies and pasties are made upstairs using meat cut from the shop. And it's this meat that forms the backbone of what Legge's is all about. His beef is hung on the bone for four weeks, and in that time it'll shrink by 20 per cent, but therein lies the flavour. The sausages are all made onsite; being agile Anthony can adapt to whatever's around. For example, last year he experimented with pork, pear and perry sausages as opposed to the traditional apple accompaniment. Then when a local farmer shot eight wild hares and brought them in Anthony created hare and pear sausage, just because he can.

Special occasions

Legge's have been known to push the boat out and do something a bit special when asked to. For a special dinner at the Royal Naval College they put together a crown of beef. That's right, two sets of cow's ribs looped round to form a crown. "It was ¾ of a meter high and over a metre long," says Anthony. "It took two blokes to lift it." God knows how they cooked it. It's not just the Admiralty that source from Legge's. Summing up Anthony tells me he regularly gets customers from Nottingham, Bristol and Birmingham coming to bulk buy and fill up the boot. It seems sometimes the customers have come from further afield that the produce.

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Check out where else Andrew went to in the West Midlands.