Triumph for Northern Irish beef in London Restaurant Awards
A restaurant specialising in Northern Irish beef has been named 'Best New Meat Restaurant' in the prestigious Eating and Drinking Awards 2012 which are organised annually by London's Time Out magazine.
The judges came down in favour of Mark Hix's recently opened Tramshed, a restaurant which specialises in Glenarm sirloin steak from a county Antrim organic farm processed by Hannan Meats, the award winning Northern Ireland butchery business.
The Tramshed menu features Hannan's 'Mighty Marbled' sirloin as its signature dish.
The restaurant was opened earlier in the year by celebrated chef, food writer and entrepreneur Mark Hix. Hix has six other restaurants in the London area all using meat from Hannan Meats, based at Moira in County Antrim.
Time Out, commenting on the meat at Tramshed, says: "The beef is aged in a 'Himalayan salt chamber' which results in a fabulously sweet and tender steak. All this meat is meted out in a former industrial building in Shoreditch by some of the friendliest staff we've encountered in London."
The restaurant has been developed from a famous grade-2 listed tramshed building on Garden Walk and Rivington Street, which was designed by Vincent Harris and built in 1905 as an electricity generating facility for the Tramway System.
Hannan Meats has been supplying a broad range of meats to top chefs in the UK for over 20 years and has gained a host of major awards for its products. The company's Italian style Guanciale was named Supreme Champion in this year's UK Great Taste Awards, an annual competition organised by the UK Guild of Fine Food.
In addition to the top award, Hannan Meats gained 26 gold stars in 20 categories in the prestigious competition.
Hannan Meats sources much of its beef from European Angus and Glenarm shorthorn herds in Northern Ireland. The company is the only meat processing business in Europe to have installed a salt chamber for ageing beef and other meats.
The Tramshed features two works by Damien Hirst: a vitrine of a cow with a chicken on its back at the front of the restaurant, and a painting of a cartoon cow and chicken at the back.