Hawksmoor chef: The recession changed the face of food. It turned us off fine dining

Customers now prefer comfort foods, says chef Richard Turner
Choice cuts: Richard Turner and James George say customers are buying less but better quality meat
Daniel Hambury
Rod Kitson3 September 2015

The recession transformed the food scene with many now opting for simple fare over fine dining, according to one of the capital’s top chefs.

Richard Turner said the downturn “changed the face of food” for the better and is responsible for a lot of the current trends.

The executive chef for Hawksmoor steak restaurants added: “The recession kick-started an awful lot of food trends that are going on now. It turned us off fine dining, complicated food, and on to things that we identify with — comfort foods and simpler foods.

“There is a knock on in all areas, things like barbecue. The recession has changed the face of food.”

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Mr Turner, 48, co-owner of butchers Turner & George and founder of the sold-out Meatopia festival at Tobacco Dock later this month, added that there was a trend for people buying less but better quality meat.

“It’s not cheaper to eat good meat, but people think they are getting better value,” he said. “In supermarkets people spend £2.95 on a chicken. You can buy a bag of frozen sausages for 99p. That can’t be right. Over 20 years people have come to believe that’s what meat costs and that you eat it every day.

“It never used to be like that. After the Second World War it was a once, maybe twice a week thing. You’d buy a big joint and make it last the week. We are maybe going a little bit back towards that. People are spending more money on less meat.”

His partner in Turner & George, James George, 40, added: “Some people who come to us for the first time will say ‘the meat doesn’t smell right’. With supermarket steak you’re not smelling anything. Aged meat does have a smell to it. For someone who’s never smelled that before they might think there is something wrong with it —‘It looks off, the fat is very dry’.

“The look of a chicken in a supermarket is very pretty, very clean, and quite false. Some of the free-range chickens we buy, they’re not the prettiest. But they’ve got tremendous flavour.” Turner, who worked with Gordon Ramsay under Marco Pierre White, said: “We should all be aware [of how meat is produced]. We get these bits of meat in cellophane packets, there’s no relation to an animal.”

They host the Meatopia (meatopia.co.uk) festival for a third year on September 19 and 20 and say its growth reflects Londoners’ interest in food production.

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