Farewell, the Crown Roast

How sad! Good butchers are few and far between. In your situation, I would continue to buy from them in their new guise, but would also point out that their marketing could do with a make-over, especially in light of the fact that their produce is local and home smoked / cured.

I hope your fishmonger stays, ours went years ago.

I'll see how it goes with the butcher - I may even offer him some advice (being an online marketer myself...) I think (hope) the fishmonger is safe - he operates from a van rather than having a shop which must reduce his costs significantly. The greengrocer should be pretty safe too, I hope. She's always looking for new and interesting things... on Saturday she took me aside to show me her basket of morels - the first of the season. I bought them all, of course... more on that soon!

So sad when a butcher goes. Ours, Machin's in Henley on Thames, doubles as a fishmonger and cheese shop, they even do their own smoking. There's the added bonus of being greeted like a long-lost friend, of sharing recipes, of meeting friends in the queue. But I grew up in Henley, and have seen four or five butcher's close down, the biggest clutch coinciding with the arrival of Tesco.

I'd certainly buy over the phone from a butcher I trust. As for the fish van, ours went years ago, although there is another now at the weekly market. Those of us that use these wonderful shops have to work hard at making sure other people know about them, and about their superiority over the supermarket's offerings. There's no greengrocer left in Henley, and I've never seen a fresh morel, local or otherwise, on sale in Waitrose ;)

Looking forward to the morel post Joanna

Here in Spain we all buy our meat directly from market butchers and back home in London from one of two local butchers. Over the years my mum has stopped eating meat completely and my dad has stopped buying meat from supermarkets, mainly because of poor quality. I think this is your opportunity to get to know the local farm shops. Post something later on to say what you did and what happened.

I will certainly keep you updated.

Farm shops seem to fall into two categories round our way - there are a few that offer genuine local-farm produce (particularly meat) which tend to be quite expensive (good for special-occasion meat, less practical for everyday meals) and those which seem to try and stock everything they can (overpriced cakes, Peruvian asparagus, tired looking potatoes...) The other option is farmers markets - however, these tend to run during the week round our way which isn't very helpful.

Quality is definitely an issue with supermarket meat. I have had very good steaks from Sainsburys (Jamie Oliver branded) but even they are no better than the standard steak from my local butcher - and more expensive. In particular, I think supermarket pork simply isn't worth buying - too lean, too wet, too bland. Pork from my local butcher - reared outdoors within 20 miles of the shop - is always top quality and, every so often, he gets in terrifically good rare-breed pork.

Whatever happens, I won't be returning to buying meat from the supermarket. I'll try the telephone ordering from the butcher, I'll try the local farm shops. And in all liklihood, we'll end-up eating less meat overall.

Oh that's a shame, I remember you posting about this before. Your Saturday morning sounds a lot like ours and it's probably my favourite part of my weekend, I don't know what we'd do if we lost our butcher. We have a Waitrose near ours and while a lot of their meat is ok in an emergency it really doesn't compare to the butcher. Good luck finding an alternative.

That's a real shame. It sounds like the butchers out of town are really struggling whereas the ones in London are doing OK. Funny that- I would have thought the lure of the big supermarkets would be strongest in the midde of London.

I hope their mail order business works out.