‘This is quite emphatically the year of the old cow. And no, I don’t mean me’
The last time I suggested that something was the taste of 2015, I ended up in Private Eye’s Pseuds’ Corner. (I blame The Manor in Clapham and its kombucha sours.) So thrilled was I about the accolade that I’m going for it again: 2015 is, quite emphatically, the year of the old cow.
And, no, I don’t mean me. I mean meat. The beef served at glamorous new Lurra isn’t so much about the current cult around length of ageing as actual animal years: the Galician rubia gallega they dish up here can reach 17 years old (typically, UK cattle are slaughtered at 18 months). This veneration of age has been the hardcore carnivore’s niche fetish for some time (see Levanter in Ramsbottom and Brindisa, which has for a while now featured “cider house beef”, usually retired dairy cows ). But its current place in the sun really came about as a result of the much-hyped Kitty Fisher’s in Mayfair, which put chewing through a 12-year-old Galician milker top of those fetishists’ list of must-dos.
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