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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Crouch End Dixy Chicken Makes Way for Butcher Tailored for Chattering Classes

Muddy Boots founders Miranda and Roland Ballard (PIcture: Daily Telegraph)

The Daily Telegraph has reported that the founders of an independent burger maker Muddy Boots are planning to launch their own chain of butcher shops with the first opening in Crouch end in February 2014.

Their plans come in the aftermath of the couple's refusal of a mass-market partnership with Tesco.

The pair are spending £80,000 refitting the Dixy Chicken shop in Crouch End over the next six months.

With this chain of new shops, the Ballards plan to bring back the traditional high street butcher shop, with a modern twist. “There will be no hanging carcasses and blooded white,” Ms Ballard told the Telegraph. “This is a modern meat shop.

“We’ll have longer opening hours, and we’ll serve wine and charcuterie in the evenings. We’ll have a fresh lunch menu every day and our products will mostly be packaged with the use-by date and cooking instructions, rather than out in slabs of meat. We’re not actually competing with traditional butchers, we’re competing with the supermarkets”.

So, it looks like the battle of the coffee shops is going to be joined by a battle of the butchers in Crouch End.

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I can't believe the sneer about " the chattering classes "  Which would you rather have, a Dixy Chicken or a decent butcher ?

Why do you imagine it's a sneer, John?

" Chattering classes " is generally used in a pejorative sense.

Wicki - The chattering classes is a generally derogatory[1] term first coined by Auberon Waugh

I diasagree with the simplicity of the Wikipedia/OE definition. I think in current usage it's often used by members of the chattering classes themselves as a wry self reference. Perhaps it's a matter of perspective and context. As for perspective, I personally don't generally assume it to be derogatory unless the context gives me cause so to do. I don't think that my headline, my edited excerpts from the DT article or what I've written in the past give any context for making an assumption of the sort you did.

My Collins Dictionary doesn't qualify the use of the term as derogatory. My Google search brought up Wikipedia as the first response, then an article by Partick Butler of The Guardian (almost certainly a member of the chattering classes himself), called "Chattering classes 'to be priced out of Islington housing market". From a quick skim, he seems to be using it in the same way as I intended, as a rather less value loaded term, lucidly describing a grouping of society.

John, I doubt Hugh would be going out of his way to take the piss out of himself !

....oh, I don't know; I wouldn't be so sure about that.......but not in this case.

Oh, are we "reclaiming it" (finger in the air quotes)? How jolly "street".

Too right...

How can you put a use by date on hung steak ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_aging

There are so many new places starting up in CE these days.  Those which focus on excellence in their field combined with great customer service, make me a very happy bunny, e.g. Bottle Apostle and Bar Esteban, probably the Pickled Pepper kids bookshop if I had kids.  Others I try to pretend they just aren't there, like the Nobbynoodle kids shop, all the coffee shops except perhaps Coffee Circus at a pinch, and numerous others.  This one sounds like a contender for the latter category.  Happy to be proved wrong - I've nothing against some good junk burgers in Crouch End - it's the boast about packaged meat with use-by dates and that idiotic photo above that is going to send me running for Waitrose or a real butcher.

v

Vaneska, I'm inclined to agree.. whilst I'm happy to see the back of Dixy Chicken (or any other shitty chicken shop for that matter), the slightly smug statements make me feel a little *bleugh*. 

As for Nobbynoodle or whatever it's called, it's not a good replacement for Powder. 

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