Warning: This is a rare post that is intended to have real world consequences. It is a guide to a City institution, the recipient of the Bank of England’s first loan, and the most intimidating experience of any white shirter’s career… we’re going Butchers.

Butchers?

There’s a butchers, Porterford Butchers, between Bank and St. Paul’s. It serves both raw meat (more on this later) and hot food (more on this later).

www.porterfordbutchers.co.uk
(Do I sing “Pooooortobellllooo Roooooad” in my head every time I think of it? …Is the pope American?)

Vernacular

It’s “going Butchers” not “going to the Butchers”. The act shares the same syntax as “going gym” and “going shitter”.
One would also never say “having a Butchers”. Going Butchers is a binary experience and one wouldn’t want to be misinterpreted as being non-committal and ganderous.

Approach play

When does a Butchers trip start?

Early. Butchers has the longest queueueueue you’ll ever see. Get there any time after 12.05 and it’s like Heathrow, pre-Terminal 5, with an imploding Thomas Cook, and a Wetherspoon’s chef called Thomas who’s run out of white toast and Guinness.

How does a Butchers trip start?

If you’re under 27 it kind of just happens. You yawn, lock your computer, mope out of your chair, and start gravitating towards the smell of bacon. Sometimes you’re sucked into it alone, sometimes floating alongside other vacant white shirters like the turtles riding the East Australian Current in Finding Nemo.

But when you hit the milestone that’s more significant than 30, structure becomes vital. From here a Butchers lunch is like going bankrupt, happening two ways – gradually, then suddenly.

It begins at 9am with laid-back one-on-one interactions as you rotate between getting your password wrong, the crap but less crap than the old place coffee machine, and the shitter. I average a 1 in 4 yes rate, with most askers nearer 8 or 9. My secret is varying my language. It keeps my voice sounding fresh and genuine. Sometimes I even surprise myself, which opens the door for a spontaneous single eyebrow raise. A typical carousel of “gradually”:
“Butchers?”
“Bootchers?”
“Bútchers?”
“Butcherinos?”
“Rinos?”

“What?”

“Butchers?”

“Oh.”

I’ll allow this to continue until 11.50am, at which point “suddenly” sets in.

Why do I feel the need to go Butchers in a group?
I don’t know. I am wonderfully indifferent to whether people say yes or no. I prefer eating lunch on my own, unless it’s a colleague I really like (I’ve never been able to test this second part).
But I do as I do. So, like a 9-5 Cinderella with midday approaching, I stretch my famously tight hamstrings, then charge around the office to find the lizards who neither drink nor piss.
I bark, “You boys still coming Butchers?!”. Despite not having spoken to them since the last time a month ago, I phrase it as a reminder. This tricks the more forgetful reptiles.
Note, in this context “boys” is a gender-neutral term and has, interestingly, never been challenged. Perhaps it’s tolerated because the product is so compelling.
My whip-round is more vigorous than if I were asking for marathon donations for an acute condition* that I’m the only sufferer of in the world.

*I’ve often wondered what it would be. I usually land on something that affects multiple parts of the body possessing a similar characteristic, say joints. Curiously, as the condition becomes more and more debilitating, one joint remains completely fine. This is because I’ve never seen a doctor puff out their cheeks, genuinely dumbfounded, and I reckon this would get them.
I’d plead, “But why is my right elbow completely fine doc? My backhand remains as unanswered as my peer group’s lunch invites.”
They’d deflate, “Pfff… Nuuuuuext plssss!!”

Departure

As a confirmed funnyman, people often think I’m joking when they see an 11.53am Outlook invite come through. The tardy soon discover I’m not. I’m militant about leaving people behind if I’m ready and they’re not. This applies both to and from Butchers. Cold hot-food is as unacceptable to me as queuing.

Why 11.53am? Even with Butchers’s queue, I won’t break the no lunch before 12pm rule. 11.53am allows minimal queuing while still getting my meat back to the office within bounds.

The only time I won’t leave promptly is if I feel a flat mood in the dressing room. On these rare occasions, don’t be surprised to see me arrive, nonchalantly, in the lobby at 11.55am.
Why the delay? To stir up resentment. Misery loves company and a common enemy creates a buzz and helps add a bit of edge to the walk.

We’ve now arrived at Butchers.

Queue

As much as I’ve discussed minimising the queue, you also don’t want zero queue. You’ll need time to interrogate the menu through the window, decide to get something different to what you always get, threaten to get the weekly special, giggle at the mugs at the back of the expanding queue, then get what you always get.

Pithole: The queue dies down by 1.20ish but don’t even think about it. Having a late lunch on Butchers day is cheating. Occasionally you will have to, but you certainly don’t want to be recognised doing this too often by the butchers.

Intimidation

The worst (best) part of the experience.

Enclosure
Butchers is a decent size shop for the City, but it’s deliberately designed to create a pressured environment. The counters are like sheepdogs, positioned to force the punters into a tight pen. No more than seven tired mutton can squeeze in at any one time.
To prepare you for when you enter – the come-bye! counter contains the cooked food, and the counter on the away boy! side has the uncooked.

the butchers

I like any of the butchers that look like they could kill you. I like all of them. But my favourite is the guy who plays left wing and winds up like a jack-in-the-box between customers, then from the bottom of his belly bellows, “Nuuuuuext plssss!!”.

They’re a good bunch of lads in there. Never graceful, sometimes playful, and always hateful. At peak time, there’ll be five gents dicing chicken, slicing sausages, and throwing daggers.

Note, the only time you can say “the” in the Butchersphere is when describing the boys with the blades behind the counter. If you’re an advanced practitioner and looking to go down the rinos route then it would be “el” butcherino.

Note, in this context “lads”, “gents” and “boys” are gender-neutral terms. There are female butchers, some of whom are the most marvellous and murderous of the lot. It’s a low bar, but Butchers has one of the narrowest gender gaps in the City. They may specialise in stopping pulses, but they’re on it when it comes to equality.

Price

No better value in the City. High quality and quantity at a robust price point. It’s £7-8 for a baguette these days. Not as good as it used to be, think it was a fiver pre-COVID, but it still outperforms its benchmark year after year. Buffett’s market miracles may be over now, but this buffet will continue its bull run.

On quantity. Even if a baguette looks full, the butcher will sometimes weigh it and top it up. If there’s no gaps to squeeze more in, they’ll line the filling across the opening of the bread, open their palms from their clenched default, then absolutely stuff it in. In the old days they’d lob any surplus into the bag/box (latter depending on butcher preference).

Ordering

If you take one lesson from this guide let it be this: NEVER ask a butcher a question. Especially not “What do you recommend?”.

And two, know what you want. If you don’t know, point at the person in front of you and say “same” in the same tone you’d say “check” playing poker or “bank” on the Weakest Link.

Menu

Burgers
On the menu, but I’ve never seen one. Decoy.

Meat box
No one gets it. It’s too scary to pick six items of meat on the hoof, or off it. Even if you’ve rehearsed your lines, the butchers will know and they’ll pretend something is out of stock to watch you stumble. The improvistas on Whose Line Is It Anyway couldn’t get out of this one. Decoy.

Breakfast
The Loch Ness Monster of meat. A mythical, massive full English, after which you don’t need to eat for the rest of the day. Never known anyone to see it, let alone eat it. Decoy.

Actual raw butcher meat
I’m in the small, but not insignificant, minority that is convinced the raw meat, that takes up three-quarters of the shop, is plastic. Decoy.
There’s a second layer to this as there’s a sign that says you can skip the queue if you’re buying any meat requiring manual intervention and an unbroken oven to consume. A certain trap and a double decoy (not the chocolate bar).

Baguettes
This is what you get. Not a decoy.

Pick your meat, pick your sauce. I get chicken breast and bacon with ketchup (saliva currently dripping on my keyboard). I’ve never tried anything else, even though there’s enough options to kill an elephant.
Despite always getting the same thing, I have had occasional lapses in judgement. The skeletons in my closet:

• Sausage and bacon – You can no longer float in the Dead Sea because all the salt’s in here. Make sure to ask for a full bottle of ketchup to offset it.
• Philly cheese beef short rib – I fell for the novelty of watching them blowtorch the cheese to melt it, and then fell victim to the chunky bones being left in. Eating became a cycle of: big bite, smash teeth, spit out three bones, swallow one, forget, repeat.
• Salt beef – Nice. Less salty than sausage and bacon.

Sauces
A extensive range of usuals (ketchup, mayo, brown, hot chilli, English mustard) and less usuals (BBQ, burger, mint, garlic, sweet chilli, American mustard). Sauce selection should be simple, but this is where most people break the golden rule.
Last week I saw a noob ask a junior butcher to pair his minted lamb shoulder. The butcher said, “Dunno haven’t tried that one”. Then a senior butcher brazenly told Junior, “Tell him one that’s wrong”. I was listening, deadpan, but the noob was too flustered to notice. The thrill seeker may have left with a minted lamb and BBQ sauce baguette, but I left with a key piece of intel – confirmation that there are right and wrong sauce selections.

Meal deals
I think it’s a couple of quid extra, maybe less, but it’s pot luck if you get one. If you do, three roast potatoes will be thrust into the bag/box and you’ll be notified your can of fizzy drink is ready by an angelic, “Get it yourself”. They do Fanta Fruit Twist too (drooling again).

Miscellaneous items
There’s sometimes random items not on the menu that you can see behind the steaming glass of the counter. Hard to unsee once you’ve seen them, but they’re a certain trap.
I once saw a scotch egg stuck to the window. It had a lesion that allowed its yolk to seep through and become an adhesive. It must have blended in with the roast potatoes then flung up there when a set were being mortared into a meal deal.

To the Elder Council

Noobs will read this and think it’s over the top. Just as they did before this guide existed and we frantically instructed them on the walk down with more rigour than a freediving instructor and less breaths than a freediver.
What should you do now you’ve found the Half-Blood Prince’s textbook?
You read them this riot act, but then you let it be. Just remember to bite down hard on your baguette when they ask the butcher for a sauce recommendation, end up with mayo on their steak, then have the nerve to say you didn’t warn them.

Conclusion

Enjoy it. But at the same time, accept you’ll make mistakes and know it’s normal to be nervous. There’s no such thing as a perfect first Butchers. Remember to take a step back (not literally) and think of the white shirters no longer with us whose footsteps you’re waiting in. It’s the most rewarding experience in the City, with daylight between it and second-placed Excel. The highest praise I can give is that Butchers is one of two things* I’ve known to supersede my morning cigarette-butt tasting Starbucks as the highlight of my day.

*The other is getting in really early and seeing the guy who walks round the City with a falcon on his arm killing pigeons.