Saying ‘vegetarian’ and ‘butcher’ in the same sentence can sound a bit awkward, but except from having meat substitutes and the association of a butcher due to the familiar refrigerated display, there’s not much of a ‘butcher’ about it.
You won’t find any meat here. Think of it as a veggie deli.
Although I am not a vegetarian myself, I realized I eat less meat in a week than I used to. Though, it can still be a struggle in the supermarket to find ingredients to make a tasty veggie meal. The Vegetarian Butcher‘s goal is to change that, and show real meat lovers they won’t miss a thing when reducing their meat consumption.
The initial idea came from an 8th generation farmer: Jaap Korteweg. Together with concept creator Niko Koffeman, chef de cuisine Paul Bom and a dedicated team, the Vegetarian Revolution is a fact. In two years since the start the Vegetarian Butcher has over a 1000 dealers across The Netherlands, it has been awarded several times and keeps on growing.
Last Friday a second concept store was opened in Amsterdam (the first is located in The Hague). At the Rozengracht 217 you’ll find all the meat (and fish) substitute products as well a whole range of other delicacies such as bread and crackers from Hartog, Piran Salt, Frecious Juices, biological wines from YanFlorijn, vegan cupcakes from Heavenly cupcakes and Professor Grünschnabel vegan icecream. And that’s just to name a few.
I did not taste much because it was a bit crowded during the opening, but it is said that the chicken substitute tastes even better than real chicken -the renowned El Bulli-chef Ferran Adrià and his team were convinced they were eating an excellent piece of chicken thigh – so I’ll defintitely head back to do me some veggie grocery shopping!
Find more info on the Vegetarian Butcher here.
