The rumours are true I can confirm that I have just finished a call with Tim Wilson from the Ginger Pig and he is definitely bringing his excellent butchers to Askew Road. So, the former furniture shop at 137-139
will undergo a total transformation and open as The Ginger Pig on Wednesday 5th October 2011. They’ll sell meat, hams, pies their awesome sausages and they may even host their famous butchery courses there – where you can learn to butcher beef, lamb or pork – but that will be subject to demand. Even if they don’t they intend to join up with Leith’s Food and Wine – just around the corner in Wendell Road – and offer some butchery courses on site there.
A massive thank you though to Fran Warde, otherwise Shepherds Bush could have lost out to Muswell Hill or Barnes. She co-wrote the Ginger Meat Pig Book with Tim and lives nearby. Although her original suggestion to open up a branch on Askew Road was very much tongue-in-cheek, Tim has taken the plunge and her advice and joins independents and knowledgable locals Askew Wine and Lavelli Bakery.
If you’ve not heard of the Ginger Pig then here’s a short synopsis of what they’re all about. Primarily, they’re farmers who raise Longhorns and Tamworths, Swaledales, and Texels and Dorsets in a commercial manner. With farms based in Yorkshire, they insist upon traceability which means they don’t buy animals for breeding – they are entirely self-sufficient, don’t feed their livestock artificial feeds and the animals grow more slowly than those raised by more industrial farming methods.
Everything they make they sell in their shops – big fans of nose to tail butchery – and Les is their baker who makes the most spectacular pies. Check out the savoury pie wedding cake on their website.
They’ve got shops in Marylebone, Hackney, Waterloo and Borough Market.
Here’s Tim’s view on what the Ginger Pig does (stolen entirely from their website). “There is no great secret to what we do: we simply raise the best animals, in the happiest of circumstances, on the finest stretch of the Yorkshire Moors we could find. Only by ensuring that our pigs, cattle and sheep receive the highest level of care can we be sure our customers will receive the quality they have come to expect. It’s not a philosophy or mission statement. It’s just what we do.”