Consumers going wild for game foods

Marks & Spencer said its venison sales for the game season – which started on “the Glorious 12th” last August and ends this week – were up 340 per cent, while Tesco’s game sales have risen by 10 per cent. Waitrose said it has seen a 38 per cent rise in sales of woodpigeon this season.

The rise has been partly attributed to popular TV chefs, such as Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, using game. Oliver devoted an entire chapter in his best-selling book, Jamie’s Great Britain to “wild food”, with recipes such as seared venison loin, roasted pheasant, and a 12-hour rabbit bolognese.

Tom Kitchin, Michelin-starred chef at Edinburgh’s The Kitchin, who has a seasonal “celebration of game” menu featuring woodcock, teal, hare and mallard at his restaurant, says there are many reasons game has risen in popularity.

“It’s very healthy, it’s very lean, and it’s flavoursome as well,” he said. “If you have a loin of venison you won’t forget it. What would you rather have? A battery chicken or a lovely red-leg partridge? And the great thing is that as well as being tasty, game is incredibly affordable.”

Craig Stevenson, managing director of Ayrshire-based game supplier Braehead Foods, whose sales have risen 10 per cent in the past year, said: “People are more comfortable with game now than they maybe were in the past. There are more Jamie Oliver, MasterChef-type programmes with game dishes and more cook schools teaching people how to cook it. People have game in a restaurant, and then they come home and they want to recreate the dish they had.”

Once seen as the province of the aristocracy and, at the other end of the social scale, poachers, game came to be viewed as an unfashionable item on restaurant menus.

However recently game has popped up in fashionable restaurants including Scotland’s only two Michelin-starred eatery, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie in Gleneagles, while Nick Nairn’s Stirlingshire cook school devotes entire classes to game cooking methods.