Yvan Seth's Hole in the Internet

I'm not, usually, one to "name and shame," preferring to write about the good and forget about the bad. But I've hit a case where I'm so infuriated that it comes with little hesitation. McKenzies butchers in Hitchin are arse.

The photographic evidence is below. Taken in the same lighting (side-by-side) the sirloin on the left is from Waitrose (a supermarket) and the sirloin on the right is from McKenzies. The Waitrose sirloin is firm and red (dry aged), the McKenzies steak is barely rosy enough to be good pork, let alone beef. It is flaccid and wet, so wet you'd think it'd been kept at the bottom of a pond for a week. The smell is distinctly different too, while the Waitrose steak has a rich meaty smell the McKenzies steak smells bad, a faint whiff of bricklayer's armpit stewed in vinegar.

Good meat, bad meat.

So, I got the McKenzies steak early in the morning since it turns out that the good local butcher, Allingham Bros., is closed on Monday. I asked for organic chicken breast, "not until Friday", lamb chops, "not until Wednesday", "sirloin?" The dude grabbed a full sirloin from out the back, cut a couple of slices, and threw them in a bag. It didn't look good, but it was difficult to tell from across the display cabinet. I'm not confrontational, so I paid my 7 quid and left it at that. When I got home I pulled it out and recoiled in terror. What foul beast was before me!

There was nothing else for it, I had to get different, edible, meat. I hopped on the bike and rode all the way up to Willian (20 mins) to The Food Barn in the hope of getting a cut of seriously local beef. No luck! Back into town to try Allingham Bros., maybe they just open later on Monday? No luck! So I resort to Waitrose, they do always have good meat available but I prefer to stick to local, smaller, businesses. At Waitrose I selected the two excellent looking steaks shown in the photo above. I'd assumed that McKenzies was simply "cheap," given current prices it is hard to tell sometimes, but the Waitrose steak was cheaper, pound for pound. I don't recall the exact price of the McKenzies steak, but it weighs only 388g (though it's now 360g after seeping nearly 30g of fluid into the paper towel) and cost £6-something. Insanity. I got utterly ripped off.

Now, I'm not knocking the hygiene standards here. I suspect the McKenzies meat is entirely, 100%, safe. (I wouldn't be surprised if it had been irradiated and injected with disinfectant!) However, as far as the quality of the meat goes… I wouldn't feed that shit to a dog. It isn't even good for stew, it is vile and offensive.

Let me finish with another photo, this time with both samples in the same shot to show there's no trick of the lighting here.

Good meat, bad meat.

I considered cooking a McKenzies steak to do a taste comparison … I can't make myself do it. That crap's going to be wrapped in newspaper and put in the freezer to be dumped in the next household kitchen-waste collection.