A cut above the rest 

Allens of Mayfair has been the mainstay of the capital’s most discerning dining tables since 1830.

The butcher’s shop was an official supplier to Queen Victoria and all subsequent royal families until 2006, when it fell on hard times and went into administration. But things have turned around: these days, it counts Marco Pierre White and Nigella Lawson as fans and David Cameron has also been known to pop in from time to time.

Its successful revival has everything to do with its new owners. Enterprising young South London butchers David House and Justin Preston poured more than a million pounds into restoring the grade II listed building on Mount Street to its former glory and opened up the shop to walk-in customers for the first time. Allens now attracts a constant stream of tourists, curious Londoners and TV crews, who flock to admire features such the traditional butcher’s block and Victorian tiles. “The shop can be made to look exactly as it did 120 years ago in a matter of 10 minutes,” says Preston.

But fashions, even in a product as seemingly invariable as meat, change. “There are definitely changes in which meats are seen as good and which ones aren’t,” says Preston. “Because of the recession, cheaper cuts are very much on the menu at the moment. Rump steak and pork belly used to be thought of as less desirable, whereas now they’re the most fashionable. Feather steak – a marbled, very tender cut that sits on the shoulder of the cow – has come back into fashion. It’s one of the best pieces of braising beef you can get and packs a lot of flavour.”

These days, Allens sees great demand for more exotic meats, from antelope to crocodile, zebra and kangaroo. But its beef, lamb and pork are all British, and it prides itself on its Scottish beef, bred specially in the Cairngorms. Marrying fashion with tradition is something Allens is known for. For example, at the start of the grouse-hunting season on the ‘Glorious Twelfth’, a team led by David House heads to the Yorkshire moors to shoot some 500 grouse and then rushes back to the shop to prepare the birds for some of London’s finest restaurants that same evening.

Now, for the first time, the public can get hands-on. For those keen to better understand the mysterious journey from carcass to plate, Preston and House hold popular ‘butchery for beginners’ courses. Every Wednesday at lunchtime, classes of no more than five gather around the hexagonal butcher’s block at the heart of the shop. After donning chainmail gloves for safety, they learn the delicate art of the identifying and separating the choicest cuts of meat, finishing the lesson with a box of meat to take home. An ideal Christmas gift for carnivores.

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Allens of Mayfair, 117 Mount Street, London W1K 3LA, 020 7499 5831, www.allensofmayfair.co.uk