Slagerij Paalvast

Slagerij Gerard Paalvast is a butcher on the Gentsestraat in Scheveningen that bones its own meat and makes sausages, burgers and fresh meals in the shop every day.

The pork is the line we checked. Their website says all of it comes from pigs that were allowed to roll in the mud undisturbed, and it names two sources, Boeren Breugel and Limburg Livar pigs; the shop's own sausages include a Livar pork sausage. More generally their website says the cattle, pigs and chickens behind the meat were free to roam in the fields, without naming the farms. Beef from Dutch double-muscled cattle (Hollandse dikbil) and Black Angus, Gildehoen chicken and lamb from Texel and New Zealand are also sold, not yet confirmed. The shop has its own smokehouse, seasons with fresh herbs and adds no preservatives.

You buy over the counter at Gentsestraat 52-A, and the butcher also caters barbecues, sending cooks to grill on site.

All the meat is boned by the butcher in the shop, a practice that goes back to 1895, when the founder opened the butcher's on the idea that you only know what you sell if you handle it yourself.