One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is the continued presence of specialist purveyors. In particular, my corner butcher.

I never really had a butcher in the U.S. Supermarkets had put them all out of business before I was born.

Here in London, there are still quite a few butchers, but like their colleagues in the states, they are increasingly under threat from supermarkets. A fourth generation butcher shop nearby in Holloway went out of business just a few weeks ago.

There has been a butcher shop on my corner, I’m told, for at least a hundred years. The gentleman who runs the shop seems to makes most of his living doing custom cuts for restaurant customers. But he would still like to do a strong retail business.

This butcher shop is, perhaps, a vestige of another age.

Yesterday, he put a sign that I hadn’t seen previously (and I’ve walked by his door now everyday for five months). It said, simply, “Our prices are cheaper than Sainsbury’s.” (That’s the discount grocery chain up the street.) On the flip side of the sandwich board, he had written a price list that included Mallard, Goose, Cornish Hen and a variety of other specialty meats. I picked up a Cornish Hen for dinner, and asked if he was having a hard time.

He told me that, actually, he wasn’t. His restaurant business was strong. But he reads the papers, too, and with food prices on the rise, he saw an opportunity to get customers back in the habit of coming to the butcher.

I hope they do. Since moving here, I’ve really only seem him busy once, and that was on Easter Weekend when families renew the tradition of getting together for Sunday Roast. For my own part, I’ve been in a few times, and I’ll keep doing business with him whenever I can, and if you live near Angel tube in Islington, I hope you’ll do the same.