Lady’s Hampstead Butcher & Providore Dinner Review

Today I want to share my review of a dinner at the Hampstead Butcher & Providore with you. This local shop on Rosslyn Hill is one of my favorite places in north London. Read on to find out why.

Hampstead Butcher & Providore

Every good London neighborhood has a butcher. From the tiny ones in remote pockets of the city to the large ones in central London, they all have a shop with big cuts of meat hanging in the windows.

Some are basic butcher shops that sell meat behind a glass counter in an otherwise bare room. Others have gone gourmet, incorporating organic cheeses, fine wines, and other foodie products.

Hampstead had a butcher when I moved to London. Unfortunately, it closed its doors about a week after I signed the lease on my first flat.

For two years the storefront sat empty. When it was finally let, it became an ice cream shop. Not bad, but not quite what I was hoping for.

Then my favorite Hampstead food shop, the Rosslyn Deli, closed its doors. I was devastated.

It was the only place that sold American food in the neighborhood (hey, sometimes a California girl needs her Libby’s pumpkin), and the cheese section was tempting enough to lure me in even when I wasn’t hungry for Stinking Bishop.

But it wasn’t all bad. Out of the ashes of the Rosslyn Deli rose the Hampstead Butcher & Providore. Finally I had a butcher in my neighborhood.

It wasn’t just a meat-behind-glass butcher, either. It was a high-end butcher, complete with a cheese room, a wide selection of wines, and a plethora of organic you-name-it.

Hampstead Butcher & Providore Dinner

And it got better. The owners of the Hampstead Butcher & Providore are former restaurateurs. Not content to just sell food over the counter, they came up with a brilliant plan to host events and dinners in the shop after hours.

Every few weeks they clear out the center of the floor and replace the fluffy cupcakes and farm-fresh mozzarella with long communal tables for 30. The shop staff turns into waitstaff, and the owners into hosts and sommeliers.

Last week I was able to attend the Taste of Italy dinner at the Hampstead Butcher & Providore. It featured a four-course meal and wine pairing.

My boyfriend and I arrived at 7pm and were greeted with a glass of Prosecco. It set a good tone for the evening.

The shop was offering a 10% discount for all guests that night, so we sipped bubbly as we wandered around the store trying to decide what we would purchase after dinner.

When we sat down at the table at the Hampstead Butcher & Providore, we found ourselves in front of heaping plates of food.

Truffle salami and thinly-sliced proscuitto sat side-by-side with large green salads, roasted red peppers, and long strands of zucchini (er, courgette).

The wine that went with it was a delicious Barbera del Monferrato from Piedmont. We promptly ordered six bottles to be delivered to our flat the following day.

The second course was a shin of beef served on a bed of creamy polenta. It was paired with a great Umbrian Sangiovese.

The dish was followed by a cheese course that featured an array of Italian cheeses and a delicious white wine from Friuli.

Dessert was a poached pear in red wine sauce with a dollop of light chocolate mousse. A sweet white wine from Veneto rounded out the evening.

The conversation at the Hampstead Butcher & Providore was as delightful as the food. Everyone there was a Hampstead local, so it gave us a good excuse to meet our neighbors.

On one side of me sat the spitting image of a famous English actor. It turned out he was the actor’s second cousin. A jovial man, he and my boyfriend had fun verbally sparring over the differences between the UK and the US.

During this transatlantic tussle I turned my attention to the man on my other side. He was a poet and actor who entertained me with stories of his 12-year trip through Africa.

We didn’t get far into the conversation before the whole table switched to other topics and my boyfriend and I talked with the couple from New Zealand across from us.

They lived in nearby South End Green and were as excited as we were to buy meat from the butcher for barbecues.

The evening ended on a high note, with most people—including us—admitting they’d already signed up for the next Hampstead Butcher & Providore dinner, a meal of Argentine steak and wine.

I left looking forward to trying the food and seeing what wines they would choose for the pairing.

I was equally excited to meet more of the neighborhood locals who make Hampstead the place I love to call home. Especially now that we have a butcher.

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