Meet the butcher’s with blocks of Himalayan salt for walls CHAMBER OF SECRETS
I N this day and age we’re used to getting everything straight away.
Communication, entertainment, coffee, food – we want everything now and we want it delivered yesterday.
But one butcher’s shop in West Wales is offering people the choice to see if good things truly do come to those who wait.
Normally, your average slab of beef is aged for a period of anything up to 28 days.
It is matured for this length of time because, put simply, it tastes better. The ageing process allows the meat to breathe and become more tender.
That’s as far as it goes – for the average bit of beef.
But what if there was a way to prolong this maturing process, to extend the period at which the meat can age? Well, there is.
Rogers and Son butchers opened in the centre of Carmarthen in 2012.
It was your typical butcher’s shop, owned by Chris and Colette Rogers, selling quality local meats to the local public, restaurants and cafés.
But they wanted to try something different.
So they shut temporarily in May for a huge refit that included reducing the floor space to make way for a Himalayan salt chamber, at a cost of “thousands of pounds”.
Inside the chamber the walls are covered with salt blocks that sit underneath UV lights.
It’s a bit like something from a film. A large window separates it from the more traditional shop side of the business, creating a fish tank experience, where customers can peer in and select exactly what they want.
Olly Woolnough, the company’s commercial and operations manager, explained what goes on inside the chamber.
“We wanted to provide our customers with something unique,” said Olly. “People can choose their own meat and, more specifically, they choose the number of days the meat has been maturing for.
“Rather than traditionally hanging the meat, which we would normally do for around 28 days, we can now age it for months, or even years if needed.
“This enhances the flavour and targets the flavour, bringing it out.
“We now have customers who come in and say ‘that 40-day steak I had last week was terrific, I think I’ll try a 50-day steak now’.”
This is when the chamber gets to work. Tags are placed on slabs of meat after customers place their orders. The taste continues to build and build until the meat is ready to come out of the chamber and into the arms of the consumer.
It’s not just your man or woman on the street that seems to have acquired a taste for this; Olly and Chris now send meat all over the UK, including to restaurants in London and Cardiff.
Salt chambers have been used before to age meat, but this is a truly unique experience.
There’s even a window outside the shop inviting the passing public to look in. It has smear marks on the outside where passers-by have succumbed to curiosity. “Our drive and vision is to promote and showcase exceptional Welsh produce to as many people as possible,” said owner Chris.
“We work very closely with local farmers who take great pride in nurturing produce.
“We are in a fortunate position in having so many wonderful farms on our doorstep, we feel it is our duty to carry on the hard work the farmer has done.
“We know our farmers, we know our animals, and we know what wholesome lives they lead.”
The modern world has made things more accessible to the customer.
Pubs now show you how their beer is made, where it comes from, and the journey it took before making its way into your gut.
These days you can’t go for a coffee without being surrounded by coffee beans of different strength, nationality and size, coupled with intricate details of what you’re about to buy.
So, is Rogers and Son a hipster butcher, strong-arming butchery into the 21st century?
“I don’t know about that,” laughed Olly.
“We’re just trying to do the right thing, we’re taking things back to basics, giving people a choice and as much information as possible about what they eat: where their meat comes from, which farm, how long it’s matured for...it’s a bit different, but it’s transparent, which is the key thing here.”
Hipster butcher or not, the business now takes a huge amount of orders through social media hangouts like WhatsApp and FaceTime.
If you’re a slave to your desk, or your kids keep you occupied day and night through the summer holidays, you can always order your beef on your smart phone. It is 2018, after all.
“The industry didn’t change, the needs of the customer did,” says Olly.
“People order food through WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook, and then you can have a FaceTime conversation with a chef at the other side of the country who wants a very particular cut of meat and he wants to see how you cut it.
“This is what we’re offering now. You have to move with it. There’s no good complaining about what others are doing, or what supermarkets are doing. There are always going to be challenges, you have to meet them and be proactive.”
Upon entering the shop, you realise instantly that this is not just your usual high street butchers.
“We have done everything to show the customer what goes on to provide them with top-quality meat,” says Olly.
“This is not about style over substance. Functionality is first and foremost. It’s a pretty spectacular sight to see the meat while it’s ageing, and we wanted to share this with our customers, we wanted them to experience it, too.
“But, of course, we’re not losing sight of the importance of looking after existing loyal customers who come in every day and buy sausages and chicken, or meat that hasn’t been aged for a prolonged period.
“At the end of the day it’s about the quality of the meat, how you like it is down to the individual palate.”
Olly only moved to Wales seven years ago, but his passion for the country and her meat radiates almost as much as the flavour from the giant slabs of beef in the salt chamber.
“We don’t know how lucky we are here,” he beamed.
“We have everything on our doorstep. Whether it’s pork from Brecon, chicken from Fishguard, turkeys from all over Pembrokeshire, beef from Carmarthenshire or lamb from Gower...
“We’re helping local farmers and local produce. It’s all here and we’re just trying to make the most of it.”