Review of Hill & Szrok Master Butcher & Cookshop
I’m on a quest to find out which London butcher has the best T-Bone steak. This week I check out Hill & Szrok, a new but traditional butcher in Hackney, East London.
Out in Hackney
Hill & Szrok is located in Hackney, on Broadway market, less than 10 minutes’ walk from London fields station.
Hill and Szrok opened up in 2014. They specialise in organic meat which they select directly from farms. They’re also a bit unique because during the day they are a butcher and at night they turn the butchery into a restaurant.
They are unabashed about their love for meat. On the day I visited they had a pig’s head on display in the front window!
Inside the shop was the most unusual butcher set up I have come across. There was no counter separating you from the butcher, rather there is a table block in the centre of the rooms and the butchers will come up to you, take your order and cut the meat in front of you. It ist more personable but it was a little chaotic when it came to figuring out where the start or the end of the queue was.
Hill & Szroks’ T-Bone Steak and the Hereford Cow
Hill & Szrok were selling T-Bone steak from the Hereford Breed. The steak was aged for 45 days and was cut from the set on display. It cost £32.11 for just under 1kg of steak.
Hereford is the breed of cow that I had at Hussey Butchers. This is a breed of cow that came from Hertfordshire in the West Midlands. The Hereford cow, identifiable by its white head and red-brown body, is beef cattle meaning that it is breed specifically to become delicious.
The steak
I cooked it for 2 1/2 minutes each side and it smoked like the devil. The result was an awesome medium rare steak.
This was an outstanding steak. The fillet was soft, delicate and had a pleasant taste while the sirloin was fatty but tasty and really tender. A single bite into a piece of the sirloin would result in the steak disintegrating.
The tenderness of the sirloin may be due to the extended ageing of the steak (45 days). Like the other T-Bone steaks the flavour of the beef was more of a sweet fatty taste rather than one with strong beefiness.
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The verdict
This was the best T-Bone I’ve had to date, but also the priciest. Hill & Szrok’s T-Bone costs £32.50 per kg and is about £8 more per kg than at second place Drings.
London Fields
Greenwich DLR
Bermondsey
Wapping
Clapham Common
What’s next?
You can see me my hit-list of butchers here. But if you know a great butcher in London give me a shout. I’d love to hear your recommendations so I can try them out for myself. Just comment below.
