Tamworth BELLY RIBS

The most popular starter at London steakhouse chain Hawksmoor is a great summer dish to recreate at home. Serve it with one of our wine matches for pork perfection

- MARK QUICK

The first branch of our now wildly successful restaurant chain Hawksmoor opened in a former kebab shop in east London in 2006. Fast-forward many, many great steaks – the best ever tasted in this country, according to UK restaurant critic Jay Rayner – and there are now six branches in the UK capital, plus one each in Manchester and Edinburgh.

That journey is charted in Hawksmoor: Restaurants & Recipes. ‘We wanted to be brutally honest about the realities of setting up and running a restaurant,’ says co-founder Will Beckett. ‘That means sharing the mistakes we’ve made, problems faced, and lessons learned. The book is meant to be picked up, read and enjoyed, as well as showing you how to cook a pig’s head or clinch a tomahawk.’

When it comes to meat and wine pairing, we usually look first to fat content, as this is a really good signpost for many aspects of your wine pairing. First of all, it helps to understand the required level of acidity – you’d want a fresh, zippy, higher-acid style of wine with a fattier cut to help cleanse the palate, for instance. Secondly, fat tends to equal flavour, so usually we look to the more powerful wines on the list for fatty cuts like rib-eye and sirloin – a Napa Cabernet would be a classic match. We would then lean towards the subtler characteristics and lighter styles of Pinot Noir and reds from the Jura to match a leaner cut such as a fillet.