H.M. Sheridan

For the better part of forty years the Ballater butcher H.M. Sheridan held a Royal Warrant and supplied meat to Balmoral, a few miles up Deeside; in 2024 the warrant was not renewed, and the shop, with characteristic understatement, said it was business as usual. It is. Trading since 1963 and run today by Barry Florence and John Sinclair, Sheridan's is the kind of Deeside butcher a good kitchen is built around — Aberdeen Angus beef, Deeside game, its own pies and sausages, a second shop down the valley in Banchory. The royal connection was real and worth recording, but it was never the point: the point is a proper butcher's counter in a small Deeside town, the sort that has outlasted the supermarket's meat aisle by simply being better at it. Warrant or no warrant, the queue on a Saturday tells you which one Ballater trusts.