Is Meat Liquor as good as it’s cracked up to be?

Maybe I expected too much. I’d been gagging to go to Meat Liquor or Meatwagon as it then was since last summer when a chef friend seemingly went down there every night to get his burger fix. And now there was a restaurant. Just off Oxford Street. With amazing cocktails. In jam jars! And deep fried pickles. Heaven!

The menu certainly reads well. I’m up for any burger called Dead Hippie (2 patties, sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions) apparently their take on the Big Mac. I loved the fact they put a whole roll of kitchen towel on the table. Yes, it’s THAT messy.



But the burger was a real disappointment. Overcooked, it tasted more like mince then chopped meat. The chips were pallid, bland and frankly McDonalds-ish. The homage had gone too far. My daughter’s chicken burger looked - and tasted - a bit like KFC. What on earth had gone wrong?

Maybe lunch is the wrong time to go (I suspect it is). Maybe you need a couple of serves of House Grog “a dangerous blend of light and dark rums with a splash of overproof rum” before you get stuck in. Maybe you should ask the ‘burgerette’ for some Pure Death Sauce. There must be some reason why everyone is raving about it except me.

Frankly if you’d come across this restaurant in say, Luton or Leicester and they’d served a burger like that you’d have thought ‘that’s not a bad burger’ but from a joint touted as serving some best trash food in London it felt like a massive let down.

Two other quibbles - the wine list while fun isn’t exactly cheap. £9.50 for a glass of Washington State riesling, even if it’s called Kung Fu Girl is going it a bit. And while the service was fine the message “‘Cheers mate’ is not an acceptable tip” on your bill is just plain cheeky. (For the record we tipped. In cash. But I didn't need to be instructed to.)

If you want a great burger, Honest Burger in Brixton Village which I checked out the other day is streets better. But what about you? Is Meat Liquor as good as the original? Meatwagon fans tell me I had an off day . . .

Henry Herbert's Scotch Eggs

Henry Herbert's Scotch eggs are a thing of beauty. Not that you'd know it from this hastily snatched photo while I was interviewing him for my article in the Guardian today. He used to be head chef at the Coach & Horses in Clerkenwell where they were his signature dish.

They are served warm (if you're lucky and get to his Chipping Sodbury butcher's just as he's made them), crisp on the outside with the yolk just the right side of runny, gently oozing into the perfectly spiced sausage casing. I almost wept when I ate mine. Oh, alright, I didn't but it was good. The best Scotch egg I've ever eaten.

Apparently there was quite a buzz about them a year ago when he did a Scotch egg masterclass reported here by Cara of Gourmet Chick.

Henry also makes scrummy-looking pies, (I say looking, because I haven't got round to trying them yet), meatballs, terrines and homemade chicken kievs.


At Ruby & White in Whiteladies Road in Bristol, the other butcher I visited, they make up their own marinades which they sell in little pots for £1. I tried a Moroccan-style lemon and saffron one with a guineafowl I bought from them which was really tasty. If you had to buy the ingredients from scratch you couldn't do it for that price.


They also have lots of cheaper cuts like shin and shortrib, and veal offal such as sweetbreads and kidneys as well as supermarket-style 3 packs for £10 offers. So butchers don't have to be expensive.

With their energy and imagination I hope they'll both succeed. They're making the effort to go the extra mile with late opening hours or, in Henry's case, deliveries so it's up to us locals to use them.

Incidentally there's a great follow-up discussion on Word of Mouth about butchers here.

Adam Denton, co-owner of Ruby & White.

Bavette aux échalotes

I used the bavette I bought the other day from Source to make bavette aux échalotes, one of my favourite ways of cooking this underrated cut. It involves an unlikely amount of vinegar so no, 75ml is not a misprint. You can make the rest of the liquid beef stock or a mixture of beef stock and red wine but I find it's particularly good if you use the Essential Steak Sauce I posted on my website today.

Another tip: bavette needs to be cooked quickly otherwise it can be tough but if you buy well-aged beef it shouldn't be a problem. You’ll probably need to order it from your butcher - it’s a cut they tend to keep for themselves. (Unsurprisingly since it was selling at under £10 a kilo)

Serves 2
2 tbsp olive oil
350g well-aged, thinly sliced bavette (skirt steak)
25g butter
225g evenly sized shallots, peeled and quartered
75ml red wine vinegar
75ml Essential Steak Sauce (aka red wine sauce) or strong beef stock
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat a cast iron frying pan for about 5 minutes until almost smoking. Trickle a little of the oil over each side of the meat, rub it in and season lightly with salt and pepper. Fry the meat about 1 1/2-2 minutes each side, pressing the pieces firmly down into the pan with a wooden spatula. Transfer to a warm plate and cover lightly with foil. Wipe the pan with a piece of kitchen towel, replace over a medium heat for a couple of minutes then add the remaining oil and half the butter. Tip in the shallots and fry over a medium high heat for about 6-7 until well browned. Pour in the vinegar and bubble up until almost evaporated. Add the Essential Steak Sauce or beef stock, the remaining butter and any juices from the meat and heat through. Check seasoning adding more salt and pepper to taste. Serve the meat with the shallots spooned over. 'Frites' and a green salad would be the classic accompaniment but it's also good with mash.

Cheap treats at St Nick's

Apologies for another Bristol food scene gloat but it's the first time for a while I've been down at St Nick's, the covered market in Bristol and I'd forgotten just how good it is.

There's a row of cafés down the centre including a Pieminister pie outlet, a Moroccan restaurant, Al Bab Mansour and the Caribbean Wrap but the best value of all by common consensus is the Portuguese cafe called Portuguese Table which doles out hearty homemade Portuguese food for a song. Even though it was raw and cold we sat on the pavement outside and tucked in to steaming platefuls of feijoada (my husband) and salt cod and potato bake (me) which cost us £4 and £5 respectively. We also bought a couple of custard tarts (see below) for a friend who particularly likes them and are going to try our best not to eat them before we see him tomorrow. At £1 each that bought the total cost to £11, cheaper - and of course infinitely tastier - than eating in most chain restaurants.


We also picked up our weekend meat from Source an excellent café and food shop I've written about before (it used to be called Taste at St Nick's). Their meat comes from chef suppliers Chef Direct so they have plenty of things you don't find in most butchers - let alone supermarkets - and at a very good price. Bavette, onglet and ox cheek for under £10 a kilo, duck legs for £2.25 each, pigeon breasts for just 90p, And staff who can actually advise on how to best to cook them. It must be the best butcher in Bristol.

The Curious Craze for Mince'n'Tatties

The oddest fledgling food trend to emerge from London's most fashionable dining rooms over the last few weeks is the Scottish staple 'mince'n'tatties' - basically mince and mash. St John seems to have started it though I suppose to a restaurant that offers tripe and chips and rolled pig's spleen and bacon it's pretty tame fare while the newly opened Soho hotspot Dean Street Townhouse refers to it as mince and boiled potatoes. Hardly a compelling description so what's it all about?

Nostalgia for retro food obviously plays a part. I remember my mum making it when I was a child, adding Bisto to thicken and flavour it and turn it a deep mahogany brown. It had an uncanny sheen as if it had been buffed up with furniture polish.

When I read that St John was serving theirs on dripping toast (now there's a dish worth reviving) I knew I just have to have a crack at it. I actually thought it was rather tasty though my husband, an ardent Francophile, wasn't over-impressed. I left the potatoes whole which I think works better than mash. You want to be able to squish them into the gravy which should ideally be made with gravy leftover from a beef roast. (I didn't have any but I did have beef dripping. You need one or the other - but not Bisto.

Some recipes also advocate adding toasted pinhead oatmeal which I can imagine would be good. I seem to remember my mum using Scott's porage oats which I wouldn't advocate though her recipe is nearer than mine to the one that won the 5th Annual Mince'n'Tattie competition in Tobermory last year. So what do I know? Here's my version anyway . . .

Mince'n'Tatties
Serves 4

25g beef dripping or lard
500g good quality lean minced beef (rare-breed beef would be good)
1 medium to large onion, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, scrubbed, trimmed and chopped small
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 tbsp plain flour
250ml leftover gravy and 250ml beef, Bovril or Marmite stock (made with half a cube or 1 tsp of Bovril or Marmite ) or 500ml beef, Bovril or Marmite stock
Worcestershire sauce to taste
4 medium-sized waxy (e.g. Desirée) potatoes, peeled and quartered
Salt and white pepper
Chopped parsley (a bit radical for mince'n'tatties but makes it look more colourful)

Heat half the dripping in a frying pan and fry the mince until browned. Remove from the pan and set aside. Spoon off any excess fat but you don’t want to lose all the dripping. Add the remaining dripping and cook the chopped onions and carrots until beginning to brown. Stir in the thyme, then the flour. Add the stock and gravy or just stock and bring to the boil. Season with salt and white pepper and a dash of Worcestershire sauce and bring to the boil. Return the mince to the pan, cover and cook over a very low heat or transfer to a slow oven for 45 minutes to an hour. Meanwhile par boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes, drain and add to the mince for the last 20 minutes of the cooking time, spooning over the gravy and leaving the dish uncovered. Adjust the seasoning and sprinkle over some parsley before serving. You might want some HP or other brown sauce on the side.

There was enough left over to top a couple of bits of sourdough toast slathered with dripping the next day (see pic above). Personally I like it just with spuds. It makes even good toast go a touch soggy.

Does mince'n'tatties appeal to you? If so do you have an ancient family recipe to share?