THE ART OF MEAT

Having a drink one night in a club in Bateman Street, Cambridge butcher Brian Adams remarked: "There is a good little business going there."

Brian was referring to a shop he had sold at 45 Asbury Court, north of the city, months earlier and which was again up for sale. Jon took the hint and bought the shop, bringing Brian out of partial retirement to help.

The jump from studying plant tissue to cutting and serving meat was not a total change of direction for Jon who got a first class honours degree from London University before graduating in molecular biology from Cambridge University. Twenty years ago, before going to University, Jon had had a taste of the meat trade when he worked for nine months at JS Strange Butchers at Lyndhurst, Hampshire.

In July 2005, he exchanged contracts on the Cambridge shop once known as BP and CD Adams, changed its name to The Art of Meat and set about modernising it - stripping the interior of much of its old fashioned steel rail work, improving the lighting and layout, making the entire setup brighter and more welcoming .

Several of the staff decided to stay on including Brian, his wife Christine, and Barry Willis, who has been in the trade 59 years and one of the few National Servicemen to have boned, cut and rolled camel meat for lunch in Tripoli.

Business is going so well that Jon wants to offer a career to a young person starting as an improver/apprentice, studying at Ipswich college and then a planned future in the Jon West business.

This reflects the support and enthusiasm given to Jon by National Federation president Mike Beaumont who used to be Jon's butcher and who has given him advice and encouragement. Moreover, the shop is to be used as a blueprint to open others, says Jon, who aims to develop a chain of traditional, personal service high street butchers under the banner of The Art of Meat.

Giving customers what they want

Since taking over the business, Jon has set about re-establishing a traditional fresh meat trade, buying in beef hindquarters and forequarters and extending the range to include added value meat cuts with minimal preparation. These include free range chicken breast stuffed with Italian sausage and wrapped in pancetta, pork escalope wrapped in Parma ham, and sausages, including the imaginatively named Italian Stallion, which won gold at the BPEX East of England sausage competition.

But its not just about award winning products. Innovation and provenance are also helping to revitalise trade and encourage 30 somethings across the shop's threshold. Customers listen interested as they are told about the pork, sourced from Mark Hayward's Dingly Dell Farm at Woodbridge in Suffolk which supplies Duroc cross gilts with at least 12mm of fat cover, or the beef, which comes from Suffolk Meat Traders where managing director Henry Warner brings his great experience to bear in selecting the beef sold in the shop. They even stay on to hear about his lamb, sourced from Smithfield Direct and Suffolk Traders and his free range chicken, supplied by Diaper Chicken or his other broilers, sourced from James Murdoch in Cardington.

This shopper-friendly approach is fostering confidence in the shop's younger clientelle, with some graduating away from just buying what's on offer to requesting more traditional cuts and even asking about preparation and cooking times.

Taste is the vital final ingredient and a lot of care is taken when putting the recipes together to ensure they are unique, down to the very seasoning, which is hand mixed from fresh spices. The fennel, for example, is mixed into coarse-cut Italian sausages as seeds so that they literally 'burst' with flavour during cooking. Christine found an old recipe book that belong to her grandmothers which led to the creation of an Old Granny Adams sausage that has already won an award.

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