Clean Cut

Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian. Have been for over 17 years now. I don’t disagree with eating meat, per se—indeed, I have been known to sneak in a sausage or two—but I do set a high bar when it comes to the sourcing and selling of it. On the rare occasions that good manners, professional duties or over-consumption of wine compels me to partake in the eating of flesh, it is only ever on the proviso that the animal in question has been reared and slaughtered with the utmost respect.

This really matters—not just for the individual animal but for humans too, with factory farming being a significant contributor toward greenhouse gas emissions and factory farmed meat being tangibly lower in taste and nutritional value. So, while I might not be the most likely person to write a feature on a restaurant whose offering is 80 per cent animal-based, I am in some ways very well placed—because if anyone is going to shine an exacting lens on the principles and practices of a butcher, it’s a vegetarian who’s only hope of sneaking a bite of sausage roll or pork pie is pinned on it being ethically sound.

Which brings me to Boxcar: the butcher, deli and restaurant that has recently opened on New Quebec Street. Joining a fishmonger, a baker and a wine store, it is the latest addition to what is fast becoming a foodie microcosm. Walking in, the hearty scent of sausage rolls welcomes me like a blanket—as does the director, Matt Gregson-Jones, who spent his whole career in restaurants before helping his friend Barry Hirst establish Boxcar.

Chalk boards on the wall behind him outline Boxcar’s offering: two pies, two salads, the sausage roll and of course the various meat cuts that day. “It is about quality, not quantity. The menu and deli are limited to displaying Britain’s best possible produce and livestock,” Matt enthuses. “We are not just butchers; we go one step further, showcasing traditional butchery skills, and re-educating people about the different cuts of meat.”

Old school butchers Matt and his colleagues have looked at our meat industry and at the fate of so many old school butchers, and decided if they’re to serve the community of Marylebone they’ll need to try a different approach. Bringing two revenue streams together in the form of a butcher’s shop and a restaurant, they will show—both in the meals and in the masterclasses held in the cool, classy basement—as well as tell customers how to get the best out of their prime cuts of beef. After all, Matt points out, “having a butcher on your doorstep is great in theory, but if you don’t know how to cook it when you get home, the meat could be the worst thing you’ve ever tasted. It could be charred. It could be tough and stringy.”

This makes business sense, but it makes ethical sense, too—meat should be treated with respect at every step of the process. “If you have gathered together the best producers of livestock and their produce, and got some really great butchers to prepare it, why not show customers how to cook it?” Matt continues. There are, as Boxcar’s head butcher Jared knows only too well, “so many ways that you can really mess up a piece of meat between the farm and the plate.”

The phrase ‘field to fork’ springs to mind here—overused to the point of cliche, but relevant in the case of Boxcar because the team here really do manage every part of the process. Before I’ve even sat down and sipped my coffee, Matt has familiarised me with the name, history, location and practices of the farming collective from which they source their pork, poultry and premium aged beef. “Charles Ashbridge, a third-generation farmer, runs a collective of 22 farmers in Thirsk, North Yorkshire,” he explains. “Rather than be dictated to by supermarkets, this group got together and said, ‘We’re producing the best livestock and we are treating it in the best way, with great animal husbandry and welfare, so we are going to come together and go to independent providers.’” The providers get consistency in quality and guarantees regarding welfare and traceability; the farmers get a fair, reliable price for their animals, which are grass-fed, given space to roam, and slaughtered locally to avoid the stress of a long journey.

“We had a meeting last week and Charles was telling us how supermarkets are driving the prices down, dictating to farmers what they should get for their beef and so on.” This in turn forces farmers to resort to industrial farming practices in order to keep their heads above water, or to exporting to Europe, where we currently send 40 per cent of our meat. “We produce some of the best meat in the world and yet we’re sending it abroad and importing from other countries,” says Matt, raising his hands in frustration at the absurdity of it. “Quality British meat doesn’t have to cost a great deal.” The idea that you can’t afford to support your local butcher is “a complete myth”, sold to us by supermarkets who have, up until recently, been slowly but surely turning the screw.

Slowly changing The good news is that this is slowly changing. Customers are more alive to farming practices and the tangible difference it makes when it comes to the taste and quality of produce. Once the sole preserve of environmentalists and butchers, terms like ‘grass-fed’, ‘free range’ and ‘high welfare’ are increasingly the standard by which even the most carnivorous of meat lovers judge their meat. “They ask questions,” Matt says happily. “They are willing to spend a little more to taste the difference, and they’re experimenting. The older cuts are becoming fashionable.” A case in point is on the day’s menu: a feather blade, braised for five hours low and slow, so that any sinew turns into fat and it caramelises. “It’s one of my favourite steaks, the feather blade,” Jared tells me. “It has more flavour than any fillet of beef.”

It’s into this climate of increased interest, knowledge and compassion that Boxcar has pitched itself, offering a place for people to learn more about British butchery in the best way possible: through eating it. “If you eat a steak from the grill and think it is fantastic, you will be able to purchase it here and speak to someone about how to best recreate it at home.” Any staff member can help you—not just the butcher or chef, but the waiters who, prior to each service, are given notes on the day’s specials and a taste of them too, having watched them be prepared in the kitchen. “I keep going on about it,” says Matt, “but it’s education, education, education—and the best way to learn is by being shown.”

Duly, I’m shown round the restaurant: to the deli counter, where a tantalising array of British produce is on sale alongside mountainous salad bowls of kale and heritage carrots, candied beetroot and goat’s cheese. In the warming oven, pies filled with pork or minted mushy peas glow invitingly, promising even vegetarian visitors to Boxcar a good time. “Lots of vegetarians suffer from food envy,” says Matt bluntly. “We can’t have that. We want to be inclusive, so we tested the vegetarian burger and pie relentlessly, and went through numerous incarnations to get something more interesting than halloumi.” The results—the pea pie, celeriac remoulade, cheese and mushroom patty with shallot rings—have me immediately adding Boxcar to my short list of ‘places to take carnivore friends’.

We head downstairs to the events space and open kitchen which, unusually, is as open as the name suggests, with even the less glamorous gadgets on show. “It is a learning environment,” Matt stresses. “We actually call this space the classroom.” In one of the many examples of Boxcar making the most of every single square foot of space, the ceiling conceals a retractable screen for projections while upstairs, the butcher’s counter transforms by night into a table from which diners can view a display of beautifully butchered cuts of meat.

Pure artistry Because they are beautiful. I can’t help but admire the care Jared and his fellow butchers have taken over every joint gleaming in the glass cabinet. It’s a damning reflection of how little value our society has come to place on our butchers that ‘to butcher something’ has become a metaphor for making a mess. “Butchery is an art form. No two ways about it,” says Matt. “From the knife skills, to the strength involved, to ensuring no part of the carcass is wasted—it’s pure artistry.” Think about how much you’d notice a joiner’s work if they were slapdash, he continues. “You can just as easily notice a badly butchered piece of meat.”

“A messy butcher is not a good sign,” agrees Jared. Sure, there are blood, brains and guts, but a good butcher operates cleanly and carefully. “To see a good butcher boning out”—that’s breaking a carcass into forequarters and hindquarters—“should be deeply satisfying,” he continues passionately. “You’ve got to be skilled to do it, and if you are it is silky smooth.” After decades of declining standards in both kitchens and butcheries, Jared agrees with Matt that proper butchery is back in fashion. “All the people born in the seventies and eighties, they just grew up with supermarkets and their food arriving in boxes. I was the same until I started learning. We never saw the whole animal, or understood about quality. During that time, price was the only thing.”

Jared is in his early thirties. A few years ago, he would have been an anomaly; now butchery is a young man’s game—and, increasingly, a young woman’s. Indeed, when I ask him whether female butchers struggle at all with the physicality of the job, he points out that his girlfriend, who does CrossFit, can probably lift more than him. “The idea that women can’t be butchers is a mental issue, not a physical one. You can be trained to carry meat.” The trade is losing its laddish culture. “There used to be quite a male ego-driven, ’earn your stripes’ attitude,” he reflects “in butchery and in the restaurant kitchen.” Now, with the advent of trendy butchers like Turner and George in Islington, Hill and Szrok in Hackney, and fellow Marylebone butcher The Ginger Pig, macho types are an increasingly rare breed.

Through poor animal husbandry and intensive abattoir practices which leave animals stressed and their adrenaline-flooded flesh almost inedible, we have spent the last 30 years rendering our livestock worthless. By helping to improve the image of butchers’ shops, the likes of Boxcar and The Ginger Pig are garnering respect for their trade among customers who a few years ago would have dismissed it as an anachronism. In joining the dots between farmers, butchers and chefs, Matt and Barry have gone one step further in restoring value to the concept of meat eating. After all that, to refuse Matt’s proffered hot pork pie would really just be rude.

Words: Clare Finney