Meat Mireille: Interview with Dad’s Gastro Farm

This Saturday is the culmination of months of hard work, preparation and of course sacrifice. The (sold out) evening that is Meat Mireille. After following the lovely Mireille on the brilliantly informative Dad’s Gastro Farm website and keeping upto date with the event on their facebook we shall finally be sitting to eat! For those not in the know Meat Mireille is an event where for the last good while Joel has been charting the progress of one cow (Mireille) on his tubblr with videos and pictures galore! This saturday (after being butchers and aged for 28 days) There’s an informative, delicious and hopefully thought provoking evening where she shall be consumed at The Bay Tree in Holywood. We talked to the man behind the whole thing to find out a bit more about the event and all things Gastro

First up Joel, tell us a bit about your background?

My background is in farming but my dad is the main man there so I also work full time in Holywood for an online learning company, helping out on the farm evenings and weekends. Education is really important in farming so I’d like to be able to combine both my jobs to see if I can make an impact.

What’s the main purpose of the Dad’s Gastro Farm website?

Dad’s Gastro Farm sprung up after I approached The Bay Tree to see if they would be interested in collaborating with me. I wanted an online presence to represent what I was trying to do, which combined my family farm, rearing animals and ultimately producing delicious food!

Tell us a bit about Mireille?

When I first decided on the project I wanted to buy in a traditional breed (Hereford, Angus, Shorthorn etc.) as is the trend right now. But Dad wouldn’t have any of it. He hand picked Mireille for the event and she turned out to be a corker, coming in at U3 grade which is just about perfect for fat and muscle quality.

How did you come up with the name Mireille?

She was named after Mireille Guiliano a French author who wrote, “French Women Don’t Get Fat”. She is a Limousin heifer, which is a French breed and I didn’t want her to get fat so I thought the name suited her well. Google had a lot to do with it to be honest

Next Saturday (24th August) You’re holding the Meat Mireille event in the Bay tree in Holywood. How did this idea for a farm to plate event come about and eventually become a reality?

I contacted William Farmer, Co-Owner of The Bay Tree, in February asking him if he would be interested in me rearing a heifer specifically for his restaurant. That was as much of a plan as I had. From there I worked closely with him and Sue (his mum and also Co-Owner) and together came up with Meat Mireille.

We had similar ideas on what we wanted to achieve which is to forge closer relations between farmers and retailers so we can understand each other’s industries better and get to know how to optimise every step of the food chain to produce the best food possible.

We also wanted to be able to educate consumers on where their food came from, how it got there, who was involved, what it ate, how it was treated. Northern Ireland is such a small place but there is still a real disconnect between what is going on in the fields around us and what is sitting on the plate in front of us. Back to basics I say.

How was working with the guys at The Bay Tree?

They are brilliant at what they do and they manage to do it without being food snobs so it was a pleasure to work with them and a lot of fun. We were on the same page from the start, wanting to learn and aiming to educate so that we could get everything right. I could gush on about The Bay Tree for a few paragraphs but I’ll just say I made the right choice when I approached them first.

What are you hoping that people take away from a night like this?

I would like people to think a little differently about food. Realise that it is more than just a packet in a supermarket. There is a story behind it and a lot of people with proper skills put a lot of effort into getting it there.

There is an art to cooking up something delicious and it is more than a good recipe. It is about breeds, what you feed the animal, how you treat it, dry aging, butchering, what cuts you use, smoking, curing, salting and everything in between.

It might be a much to ask that people go away with all that, but just to raise their curiosity would be a good start.

Any other projects that your currently involved with or that we should look out for in the future?

I am working on a few ideas. You can find out a bit more about one of them on the night…