A great steak from Waitrose.

Double aged on the bone

I know I bang on about never buying steak from supermarkets, but occasionally there’s no other option. Last weekend was one of these occasions. We’d spent the week in Switzerland skiing and arrived back in London on Saturday evening at about 7pm. In time to catch the last 15 minutes of the rugby but sadly too late to pick up meat from the butchers or defrost any from the deep freeze.

Fortunately Waitrose has recently opened on Chiswick High Road so I am no longer forced to go to the sorry excuse for a supermarket that is Sainsbury’s. It’s fair to say that the people behind the meat counter at Sainsbury’s are complete imbeciles and know absolutely nothing about the products they sell. It’s quite shocking that a company can put such incompenent people in charge of selling their wares. What Jamie Oliver is doing associating himself with such an abhorant organisation I do not know.

The people at Waitrose however are very well informed about the products they sell. Not only do they convey a sense of knowledge but they also seem to care about what they do. They are in a different league to their counterparts at Sainsbury’s.

On this occasion the very pleasant butcheress advised me to try the Ribeye, which had been double-aged on the bone for extra flavour. I asked her to cut me a healthy 500g serving which I grilled to perfection for about 6 minutes on each side. The outcome was delicious and as good as most steaks I have eaten recently from various butchers or restaurants.

I stand by my conviction that supermarkets are generally piss-poor alternatives for a decent butcher, but I can safely say that I can exclude Waitrose from the category.