The Wild Game Co monthly pop-up

Feasting, Highlands style, in Clerkenwell

Andy Waugh, the founder of The Wild Game Co, is a man with a calling to bring Londoners the best game from the Highland estates near where he grew up: “My aim is to gain a wider audience for wild game and to exhibit our delicious produce in a different setting.”  

But he is keen to move away from any Scottish clichés, to which end, from Friday April 25, he is opening a monthly pop-up restaurant called Struie Road in Clerkenwell’s Workshop Coffee Co. Each evening will showcase eight courses (£49), including wild-boar sausage roll with gooseberry ketchup, roe-deer chateaubriand, whole lobster and foraged salads. For although it’s not exactly the place to invite a vegetarian (with a splash of irony, the Workshop Coffee Co was named Best Vegetarian Breakfast by the Observer Food Monthly), Struie Road is not just about the game.

“All the produce comes from an area called Struie that is a Site of Special Scientific Interest because it is one of the healthiest ecosystems in the UK. It produces lots of amazing meats, including venison, beef, lamb and mutton, and has great salmon, as well as shellfish from the surrounding sea.”

The name of the pop-up, Struie Road, refers to the remote road leading from Waugh’s father’s 32-year-old butchery business, from which the meat is flown overnight for a 9am arrival at the London restaurant. He chose the Clerkenwell venue because “as soon as I walked into the Workshop I loved the space, with its indoor walled garden”.   

The Wild Game Co Borough Market stall won the Young British Foodies Street Food Award 2012-13, and has been recommended as one of the Top Five Places to Eat Game in London by the Evening Standard – and this venture promises to build upon those triumphs. You can almost taste the success.