The Fabulous Butcher Boys
Woolworths TASTE|November 2017

The recently opened boutique butchery and wine bar by chef David Higgs – The Butchery by Marble – more than delivers on its promise to elevate excellent quality, carefully sourced meat to pride of plate

Nechama Brodie
The Fabulous Butcher Boys

WHEN DAVID HIGGS and his business partner Gary Kyriacou opened their “meat-and-flame” restaurant, Marble, in Johannesburg in 2016, David says they were told they wouldn’t last three months. The more generous critics gave them six. Fast-forward 13 months and, according to David, the restaurant has “been full every night since we opened”. As a sort of anniversary gift to loyal customers, in August the venue launched its first fully fledged brand extension: a boutique butchery-charcuterie-retail-wine-bar, The Butchery by Marble, two floors below its expansive restaurant space on Rosebank’s Keyes Art Mile.

“The Butchery was always part of the plan,” says David, explaining that Gary’s background was originally in retail. “But, quite fortunately, as it turns out, we didn’t have the capacity to open it when Marble opened.”

The “fortunately” part is worth a slight narrative detour – an origin story that needed to be rewritten on the fly. Literally, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

This story is from the November 2017 edition of Woolworths TASTE.

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This story is from the November 2017 edition of Woolworths TASTE.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

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