Shops we love: Meat on Tory

File under: retail, food, Wellington

Regular WellUrbanites may have gathered that I don't eat in very often, so I don't have much call for grocery shopping. Now that barbeque season is upon us, however, there are times when I need to buy some fresh, raw meat, and vacuum-packed supermarket fodder just doesn't cut it. There's always Moore Wilson, of course, and while Wellingtonians are lucky to have such a fantastic resource, we're not always in the mood to schlep up to Lorne St and battle through the carpark and shopping trolleys.

Luckily, we have our own very urban version of the traditional neighbourhood butcher's shop. The shelves and fridges of Meat on Tory are of course groaning with meaty goodness, including well-aged beef, dry-cured bacon, prepared meals (such as lamb noisettes stuffed with walnut and mint pesto) and their own range of sausages that offers flavour combinations from the traditional (lamb and mint) to the exotic (tree tomato and bush pepperleaf). But it's not just a carnivore's cornucopia: they also stock Rachel Scott's bread, a small but respectable range of cheeses, and alcohol. Now that's what I call a balanced diet.

You get the sense that this is very much a temple to gastronomy and quality produce. Having knowledgeable staff is always a bonus, and in the way that pubs often have Sky Sport running continuously in the background, they play food-porn videos (Jamie Oliver, Two Fat Ladies) to get you in the mood.

Since the wellingtonist(a) mentioned it back in May, there have been a couple of additions. First, they now offer some ready-to-eat sandwiches (roast beef rolls, bacon butties) to eat in or take away. The shop also now contains a rather good little wine and beer shop called Quaff.

If that last sentence sounds slightly odd, almost as if it's a shop within a shop, then that's exactly what it is. Our enlightened licensing laws have declared it illegal for small delis to sell alcohol (Wine with food? What a preposterous notion!), so Quaff has to be treated as a separate entity.

It works like this: you go up to the mezzanine to select your wine, then come back down to get a sales assistant, then the two of you go back up so you can pay using the separate eftpos machine, then you can go back down to continue your food shopping. It's a process that's more laughable than truly inconvenient, but it shows that despite all the recent liberalisation of our liquor laws, there are still some atavistic legal anomalies to remind us of the times when wine was regarded more as a social evil than as a healthy part of everyday life.