Fake meat – and tears for Dinner
RITCHIE Stainsby and Lauren Nally cater for an odd bunch: people who hate the thought of eating meat so much they’ll eat something that looks just like it.
Being vegan is one thing. Making meals without anything taken from animals is entirely understandable on moral grounds. But why would you then want to eat something named after and created in the image of an animal part, like glazed “pork belly”?
Ritchie and Lauren clearly understand the outlook of those who want to behave like nasty old meat eaters, without any of the ethical baggage, because they’ve opened a shop catering especially for them.
They don’t mind upsetting pedants, either, describing Faux as a “vegan butcher’s” when most dictionaries define “butcher” as someone who slaughters animals or sells their meat.
Faux makes no bones about being an imposter, offering fake meat designed to look, taste and cook like the real thing, from “chicken thigh” and “cured pastrami” to “herby meatballs” and “sticky brisket”.
There’s even a “meat slicer” behind the counter of their Sherwood deli and the couple offer tips on how to make a fry-up or a roast.
“The most exciting product is probably the chicken thigh,” says Ritchie. “It’s got a crispy skin that you don’t usually get with vegan chicken options, and can be cooked in different ways.
“The burgers also cook really well on the barbecue.”
It’s no skin off my nose what they call their animal-friendly products and I admire their enterprise in spotting a gap in the market, with a cartoon pig declaring “I ain’t got no beef” as their logo.
Perhaps an enterprising grocer will be inspired to lure meatheads into the dark world of healthy vegetables by colouring thinly-sliced bacon green and pork sausages orange and selling them as faux lettuce and carrots.
A LITTLE bit of me died in the minds of my grown-up sons and their partners with the death this week of actor Paul Ritter.
Even I can spot elements of myself in his brilliant portrayal of dad Martin, stripped to the waist, spluttering expletives and making veiled sexual remarks to wife Jackie in the Channel 4 comedy Friday Night Dinner.
So famous is his description of Jackie’s roast dinners that you can buy mugs and T-shirts bearing the phrase “lovely bit of squirrel”. Now that he’s gone, I hope Richard Wilson (Victor Meldrew in One Foot In The Grave) and Peter Griffin, aka Family Guy, hang around for a while or there’ll not be much recognisable about yours truly.