“The problem with
vegetarians is that they’re eating my food’s food.” Christian Stevenson, a.k.a.
‘DJ BBQ’, as quoted at Meatopia, London,
7th September 2013
Yesterday, we went to the Docklands – Tobacco Dock down Shadwell
way to be precise – for Meatopia,
which promised to be a carnivorous experience to remember. Meatopia, which as
the name suggests is a foodie festival concerning all things meat-related – has
been going for nine years in the USA (it was founded by the food writer Joshua Ozersky) but this was the first time
it had come to London. I expected good things. Many good things.
On entering, we were greeted by a lot of smoke. The old
warehouses of Tobacco Dock are partly covered, and with a couple-of-dozen
barbecues on the go (one of Meatopia’s principal guarantees is that all of the
meat served is cooked with wood or hardwood charcoal, no butane, propane etc
allowed), the atmosphere was smoky to say the least. I got the distinct
impression that the organisers hadn’t thought everything through – but it
could’ve been worse, I’ve been to foodie events in parks that have been
wash-outs thanks to the weather, and at least we were on solid ground here.
Glimpses of foodie heroes could be seen; Fergus Henderson was there, and Daniel Young (no relation) of Burger
Monday fame was on the stage for an early Q&A session, while Jay Rayner seemed
to have adopted an almost-furtive pose in a flat cap. My sometime
butchery tutor Nathan Mills was
on hand too, helping out on the main stand (a.k.a. ‘The Cutting Room’).
We started with a coffee; not just any coffee but a
blend of Ethiopian, Brazilian and Kenyan coffee courtesy of Climpson
Estates. Now I used to be the kind of philistine who would deliberately ask for
Nescafe when I went into a branch of Starbucks or Costa Coffee, but in recent
years I have come to appreciate good coffee and I am particularly fond of
Ethiopian coffee, probably a direct result of having travelled in that country.
My yardstick nowadays is that if it’s good enough, you don’t need to add milk
and this blend passed that test with flying colours.
Following that, we split up to sample what we wanted to
sample of the various barbecue stands that were giving off that tantalising
smoky smell.
Tayyabs, the
legendary Pakistani curry-house in Whitechapel, was doing their Chargrilled
Lamb Chops (“marinated overnight using a 40 year old secret recipe”), which I
passed on the grounds that I last dined there, and had the lamb chops among
other things, less than a month ago and I was looking for something different
at Meatopia.
Which was why I made a beeline for the St John barbecue, and not just
because they did not appear to have much of a queue (although God only knows
why). St John being St John, they’d gone for an offal offering of
Ox Heart Bun. I wanted to start my culinary experience of Meatopia by having
something I would not normally eat, and ox heart definitely falls into this
category. The heart, so the man on the stall told me, had been marinated for 36
hours in a garlic and balsamic mixture before being grilled, and then allowed
to stand in its own juices. I’m not much of a balsamic fan, but the meat stood
out against all the flavour to create a wonderful eating experience.
Next up was the Wild Game
Company. Now I happened to be walking past this stall when Andy, the kilt-clad head
honcho of this most Scottish of meat ventures, came over and said hello to my
dad. They knew each other from Broadway Market in Hackney, where until recently
Dad sold the finest Cheshire
cheese a couple of stalls along from the Wild Game people. When Allison and I
stood in for Dad on the stall, we did spend some of our takings on their
venison! Andy’s people were offering Venison Steak Frites with a spicy
mayonnaise, and venison as part of steak-frites was a new one on me, so I went for it. It was lovely – my only critique is that I’d’ve liked more
venison!
My next objective was to get a drink. Beer was courtesy of
the Meantime Brewing Company, the
Greenwich-based microbrewery who do a great Pale Ale, and their lager’s not so
bad either (I say this as a dedicated real ale drinker).
The highlight of the day was without a shadow of a doubt the
butchery demonstration by Dario
Cecchini, the legendary butcher of Panzano whose restaurants Allison and I
have visited
on more than one occasion. To Dario, butchery is not a job but a way of life,
and via his wife (who’s American; she did the translating), he espoused his
philosophy on life – as he put it, “a story of hunger, intelligence and
know-how” in which the butcher, who is the “most delicate link in the chain of
food”, is at the centre of the community he serves. This was impressive enough,
but this man did this while butchering a pig half-carcass and giving out
information on what to do with the trotters (in Tuscany one can apparently be used to feed
ten people) and the head (head cheese, a.k.a. brawn). With Dario as with Fergus
Henderson, whom he hailed as a culinary hero, nothing is wasted.
The centrepiece of Dario’s demonstration was the porchetta, the central cut of the pig
that starts four ribs down from the head. After deboning it with ease, this was
rubbed with salt (not just any old salt but his own finely-ground herb-infused
salt), fennel pollen (which represents summer, thus making this dish a
combination of the seasons given that in Tuscany pork is representative of
winter because that’s when the pigs are usually butchered) and rosemary (a
symbol of “peace, and the love of good food”). It’s then rolled and roasted.
Apparently, porchetta
thus cooked was served up to a summit between Orthodox and Catholic religious
bigwigs in Florence in the early fifteenth century, and on tasting it one of
the Orthodox delegation declared it to be ‘aristos’,
which in Greek means ‘the best’. According to Dario, although this did not
manage to resolve the Great Schism, it did lead to six years of peace between
the two rival factions of Christianity! To this day, this dish is still called arista alla Fiorentina in Tuscany in honour of
this feast.
While he’d been doing this, a ready-prepared porchetta joint had been roasting away, and
this was cut up for us punters. Allison managed to get hold of some, and it was
lovely, the herb combination combining very well with the pork.
The only problem was with the suggested wine pairing with
this amazing dish. One of the sponsors was Casillero del Diablo, and although I
have nothing against South American wines (they're lovely, honest!) I did think that saying that arista alla Fiorentina is best paired
with a wine that happens to have their label on the bottle was a bit of a
cop-out. Personally, I can think of nothing other than Chianti as the perfect
accompaniment to anything Dario Cecchini serves up. But hey, that’s just my
opinion.
Dario was followed on the main stage by another cookery
demo, this time concerning beef that had been cured using salt from the Himalayas. My one-time tutor was on hand to cut the T-bone
joints for the barbecue, courtesy of another
of Meatopia’s sponsors (and who else but a barbecue company would you expect to sponsor this meat-fest?).
The resulting meat was truly one of the best
examples of barbecued steak I’ve ever tasted, although I could only get a
couple of pieces from when they handed out samples to the crowd.
By late afternoon, some of the stalls were running low or
running out of their food, causing long queues at the stalls that were left as
punters were still hungry and keen to offload their ‘meatbucks’ tickets. Some people, and I’d not care to name names, evidently had not planned for the number of people who did show up. A lesson for future events here, I think. To
their credit, Shake
Shack had a plan B which consitsted of pork sausage to replace the sold-out
pork belly, topped with an American cheese sauce and chopped cherry peppers.
Now that is a topping I’d like to replicate.
But the biggest queue of them all was for Almost Famous’s Run BMC Burger, “a
chuck, marrow and brisket patty with BBQ salt n pepper pretzel beef rib, pork
cracking, crumbled beef monster munch [yes, really], peppercorn mustard cream
mayo and a tangy beef stock beer BBQ jus dip”.
We queued, and queued. And stayed in the queue. We saw
them send someone to stand at the back of the queue to stop anyone else from
joining it. One of us went to get more drinks, which led to a longer trip than
expected as some of the bars had apparently ran out of drinks! We saw the smoke from the barbecue.
We sent one of
our party to the front to ascertain that there were still enough burgers left
(there were). Allison contacted Daniel Young on Twitter to check if the burger
was worth the wait. We befriended the people next to us in the line, who shared
the bounty of their goodie-bags (including a very quaffable Chilean merlot).
Then, after two minutes short of two hours, we made it to
the front and were rewarded with our burgers. Anticipation, already running at
record levels, was heightened by our bearing witness to the preparation line. We’d
certainly earned them!
The burgers were, by the way, delicious. London does have a bit of a gourmet burger
scene going on at the moment, and these were up there with the best.
After savouring our burgers, we took in the post-prandial
atmosphere – the smell of the barbecue pervading throughout, and the ska band on
stage adding to an end-of-the-party atmosphere – before heading off into the London
night.
All in all, this was an event to be remembered and I’m very
glad we went. Although there were a few teething troubles that are no doubt due
to this being Meatopia’s first event in this country, I fully expect that
Meatopia will return, and that these little problems will have been sorted out
when it does so.
