Walter Smith Birmingham

There are a handful of Walter Smith outlets around Brum and it’s always a reassuring sight to see the familiar sign on a High Street. The Walter Smith outlet has been supplying me with animal flesh for over a decade, and since the main supermarkets in Harborne are now a Waitrose (which used to be a Safeway when I first moved there) and a Marks and Spencer, Smiths provides one of the only ways of getting your meat fix in B17 without re-​mortgaging your house. The staff are friendly and helpful and, as you’d expect from a long-​established butcher, they know their meat. They have a hot plate selection, too, which is dangerously tempting (and smells great) when you’re on a mooching trip on the Harborne High Street.

With shops all over the Midlands, Walter Smiths is one of only a handful of butchers in Harborne — I must admit that as a rather sensitive, vegetarian child I would refuse to go into this shop until relatively recently — but if you like decent cuts of meat and want to buy a lot of it then Walter Smiths is the place to go. As well as offering ‘award winning’ sausages — including a black pudding variety that is really very tasty (my sensitive, vegetarian days are very much over) they have a hot meat counter with sumptuous pies, pork and stuffing baps and chicken legs. They also do vegetable packs — think turnips, spuds and leeks for hearty casseroles or carrots, onions and peas for wholesome stews and they sell seasoning and sauces to go with most cuts of meat. You can order your turkey from them at Christmas and they are happy to offer tips on cooking chops, steaks etc.