Our story

The shop opens in 1959

The shop opened in 1959, Three generations have worked in the same shop since, and one habit has never changed: we buy our beef and veal live, at the farm itself.

The trade was learned on the road, out on the rounds with the father. In the farms you watch and you listen, and in time you come to recognise the animals that will make fine meat. The first animal was bought at eleven, and badly bought: you learn in the field, rarely anywhere else.

Flavour first

The flavour of a piece of meat never comes down to one thing. It comes from the breed, from what the animal ate, from the conditions it lived in, and finally from the dry-aging.

That last stage is what reveals the others. We dry-age the hindquarters for four to five weeks, sometimes longer. The meat loses its water, concentrates, tenderises, and takes on the character you expect of it.

Selection, innovation, trust

We look for different origins rather than a single one. Salers from Aurillac, with its crisp fat and marbled flesh. Angus, the Scottish breed known for its fine flavour, since 2009. Wagyu, the breed Kobe beef comes from, since 2010. Each one reached the shop after a meeting, and often after a visit.

We still make those visits. The breed photographs you see on this site come from them: they are our own, taken at our farmers’ places.

The rest rests on trust. For half a century we have called at the same farms every week, to sell meat or to buy animals. When a deal is struck the price is rarely the first subject: the length of the heifer, her back, her fat cover and the smell of the hay all come before it.

Passed from father to daughter

The shop went from father to son, then from father to daughter: Aline, Claude’s daughter, runs the shop today. The same farmers, the same gestures, the same standards.