Glen Viller was a young butcher working at the Harrod's game and poultry counter when a woman approached, wanting to know about the partridge. Which was better, the red-legged partridge or the grey partridge? Viller did his trained spiel about both being good, though the latter was double the price. The woman insisted on an answer. She was hosting the Queen and the Queen Mother and price was no object - it had to be the best.
Viller spent many happy hours learning about pheasants, pigeons, guineafowl and grouse in his year at the London institution in the late 1980s. It was part of a world tour on which he embarked after working at the David Jones Food Hall. Knives in hand, he went to Scotland and Canada, where he ended up running an organic butchery for a year in Toronto in the mid-1990s.
He developed a love of game - and anything unusual in the meat and poultry department - that lingers today. Check the front fridge of his ultra-smart butchery, which he opened four months ago below the Burley Katon Halliday designed apartments of the converted Rex Hotel. You'll find crocodile, camel, buffalo and wild rabbit in vacuum-sealed packets.
They are next to the other packets of mini-roasts, duck breasts, pork fillets and pancetta and marinated rabbit pieces. In the main meat display, there are porchetta and pieces of suckling pig, sausages from the standard to wild boar and kangaroo, organic chicken and sirloin steak, porterhouse seasoned with truffle oil, chicken mignons and tuscan pork rissoles.
He has a strong selection of smallgoods: chorizo and cacciatore sausages, sopressa and prosciutto, basturma and beef jerky. His timber shelves are stocked with essential pantry items including pasta, peppercorns, truffle oil, sauces and his own range of spice rubs and blends. He also stocks Sonoma's sourdough breads, Fountaindale free-range eggs, cheeses, organic butter, black and white puddings, gammon steak, Goldyna mayonnaise, Quigley's wood-smoked yellow-fin tuna and Parkers organic juices.
Clearly, his customers are a varied lot, but so, too, are the influences on Viller's repertoire. After returning to Australia in 1995, Viller worked at David Jones again, Ivan's Butchery, A.C. Butchery and Sam the Butcher, all of which left their mark.
Viller, however, is making a much bigger mark. He has brought a butcher shop back to an area that has been without one for five years - and he knows that the indigenous English grey partridge is a better eating bird than the French red-legged one.
Best buys
Lemon garlic rabbit pieces, $25.99/kg
Marinated suckling pig, $20.99/kg
Organic New York steak, $40.99/kg
