The only agonising decision ticket-holders to make is choosing a champion from amongst these contenders:

GIUSEPPE by The Perfectionists’ Café
tomato, buffalo mozzarella, buffalo ricotta, ‘Nduja, confit tomatoes, Parmesan

AMERICAN PSYCHO by Wandercrust
tomato, mozzarella, Ventricina salami, Roquito peppers, chilli honey

SANT ORBINO by Santa Maria Pizzeria
tomato, smoked mozzarella, salamella piccante, burrata, tarallo crumbs

CONFIT LAMB by Hai Cenato
confit lamb neck, spiced aubergine, ras el hanout, mozzarella, yoghurt, mint

TRIBUTE by Mother
tomato sauce, Bigoncia prosciutto, Parmesan, Pecorino Romano, fresh basil, oregano, black pepper

PALOMA by ‘O ver
smoked mozzarella, chiodini mushrooms, pancetta arrotolata, black pepper, fresh basil

* Vegetarian alternatives will be available for all 6 of the pizzas above.

For more information about the 2018 London Pizza Festival, click here.

For #LBBfinal updates and news about other young&foodish events like the Y&F Facebook page.
 

Slowly cooked and stored in its own fat, duck confit can be a tender, melty delight. Its fatty skin, when pan-seared to a bronze crisp, is the most irresistible casing for salty and succulent duck meat this side of Beijing.

But like most routinely reheated meats preserved duck is prone to dryness. This is especially problematic when the leg meat is skinned and shredded for the likes of duck confit tarts, spring rolls and tacos.

One surefire if unconventional way to dry out skinned and shredded duck confit meat would be to spread it out over the bottom of giant paella pan and let that pan heat over a direct fire in a covered market for hours. Le Marché du Quarter, a French foods vendor at London’s Borough Market, demos this new technique with the hacked duck confit meat its affable servers squeeze into ciabatta sandwiches. The bread is brushed with Savora, a French mustard with a flavour comparable to British Piccalilli, but sadly this application is of little practical benefit. No amount of additional mustard, duck fat, mayonnaise or other first-aid sandwich pommade could sufficiently moisturise the dry, throaty meat. Small wonder the sandwich is called “Le quack”.

You might think the author of three French cookery books who chooses to call himself young&foodish would know better. Yet there I was on Saturday, dutifully lined up with the other punters like ducks in a shooting gallery to pay £5 for sandwich meat I wouldn’t swallow again unless they shoved a tube down my throat and force-fed me in the manner of a foie gras-producing duck.

Le Marché du Quartier’s duck confit-in-a-paella-pan sandwich does make for great market theatre. Viewed from the rear of a long queue – make that a very long queue – the duck confit suggests an enticing alternative to salt beef or pork belly. As a London sandwich scout I had to make certain this wasn’t Borough Market’s next exceptional meat sandwich. I’m sure others on the queue felt they too could risk it for a fiver. Whoever orchestrated this spectacle of a generously stuffed sucker sandwich is one cunning quack.

Three weeks shy of 30 and three months from running his own kitchen for the first time at autumn arrival Elliot’s Borough Market the Glaswegian has already held positions at Tom Aikens and The Ledbury in London, Marque in Sydney, Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York and, most opportunely, Noma in Copenhagen, named World’s Best Restaurant in April.

I am nevertheless impressed by McHale’s fleeting experiences abroad, first of all because he’s so up front about their laughably limited scope but, more significantly, from the multiple ways in which he’s been stimulated by them.

Only when you examine the timelines does McHale’s luminous work history begin to lose wattage. His spell at Noma under Rene Redzepi lasted only 3 weeks; his tutelage in the shadow of Momofuko’s David Chang, all of one day. Furthermore, his duties at those acclaimed restaurants were hardly challenging. When he wasn’t prepping cauliflower at Noma he was inside the refrigerator, scraping granita. Ah, the glamorous life of the kitchen temp.

It’s an oddity of apprenticeships: one protégé can spend 20 years working closely with a maestro and then accomplish little on his own, whereas another can stick around just long enough for a cup of coffee yet be nudged onto the path of true greatness. I think of the short but momentous few months Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi worked as an assistant in the Paris studio of Roumanian Constantin Brancusi.

McHale took stock of his backstage glimpse of Noma, even if he himself didn’t prepare any. He pushed himself to the front of the kitchen to help dress plates and marvelled at the organic, casual and deceptively simple look of dishes painstakingly composed to Redzepi’s exacting templates. He observed how the kitchen learned the nationality of every guest and sent out a chef who could explain various dishes to each diner in his native language. He felt the full force of Redzepi’s fervor for local sourcing and foraging. Out of faith, opportunism or a combination of both he now practices a religion where non-indigenous mangoes and coconuts are the forbidden fruits.

Normal people pull out their mobiles to show you recent snaps of their baby. McHale hands you his HTC Legend do show you up-to-date snaps of his baby radishes. A seed geek keen to revive vanished varieties of British heritage vegetables and fruit, McHale and Elliot’s have forged a partnership with Chegworth Valley Farm in Kent. That award-winning juice company will cultivate rarely harvested seeds for McHale and he’ll use their yield at Elliot’s, which is to source directly from Borough Market traders such as Chegworth. At the Pavilion pop-up he buried Chegworth radishes in an edible compost of black sesame seeds, a homage to or theft from –  take your pick – Noma and its signature Radiser amuse of radishes in a pot of soil.

Momofuko reinforced McHale’s appreciation for exceptional dining without the comforts traditionally associated with it. Not content just to have a casual restaurant with topless tables (no naperie) on both levels McHale wants the six seats and bar that will face Elliot’s open-kitchen downstairs to be set at the precisely the right heights to promote easy interaction between cooks and diners. He scouted the restaurants of New York with a tape measure in his pocket and regards the height of the chairs at Momofuko as a trade secret nearly as valuable as its recipe for fried chicken.

photo by Brian Jones

So will Isaac McHale be the next big thing? Hard to say. He cooked alongside Brett Graham at The Ledbury for 5 years and says it took that enormously talented chef almost as long to advance from cooking in the style of what he calls “London chefs doing French food” to one all his own. McHale will have to prove he can do the same, progressing from Noma themes, Ledbury riffs or Momofuko melodies. He must also learn to circumvent inevitable kitchen disasters such as the one last Friday that led to a main course of Old Spot pork shoulder as dry and tough as any in London.

photo by Brian Jones

Still I would not dare miss one of his Friday pop-up dinners, which are nearly sold out for the entire summer. The setting is spectacular; the wines are well chosen and much of the food, from chicken oysters in pine salt to Cornish mackeral with celtic mustard, is exquisitely conceived and prepared. Besides, if McHale does make it big you will want to be able to tell your grandchildren that you knew his beautiful radishes, carrots, spring onions and cucumbers back when they were still babies.
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It got worse. They didn’t only bring memories of Italy with them; they carried spoils, too: Bottarga di tonno rosso from Marzamemi, Gerardo di Nola long spaghetti from Gragnano, Poggio di Bortolone extra virgin olive oil from the Chiramonte Gulfi winery of the same name.  The first thing one of our house guests did after setting down his bags was commandeer our kitchen and toss together a large bowl of spaghetti alla bottarga con limone e prezzemolo.

As I ate his maddeningly impeccable pasta I chewed over my London EATinerary:

St. John Bread and Wine
Present (coffee from World Barista Champion Gwilym Davies)
Monmouth Coffee (Borough Market)
Kappacasein (toasted cheese sandwich)
Tayyabs
De Gustibus Borough Market (salt beef)
Dock Kitchen
Petersham Nurseries

Each outing began with a steep climb from our temporary home in Crouch End to the Highgate tube station. Charming as this leafy stretch may be in its autumnal splendor, the 20-minute hike was no stroll through the Piedmontese vineyards. If my friends wanted to burn their quadriceps and destroy their knees I’m sure they would have chosen to do so while in the bucolic hills of Langhe and Monferrato. The white truffles of Alba do wonders for ruptured tendons. Moreover, it was difficult for them to enjoy their walks in this deceptively calm area of North London given the clear and present danger of being run off the pavement at any moment by a Bugaboo buggy or a Micro kick scooter.

They made it safely to the first 4 stops on my food tour without incident. Their luck changed at Tayyabs, where the queue inside the dining room moved at the pace of a glacier – that is to say, a glacier prior to the era of global warming. A more benevolent Tayyabs would hand out naan noshes and toothpick-skewered sheekh kebabs to ease the long wait. Instead they torture you for 90 minutes by parading sizzling platters of succulent kebabs and lamb chops within inches of your nostrils at 10-second intervals. The dizzying aroma from the Punjabi spice mix is so potent it could be used in place of smelling salts to revive any Tayyabs waiters knocked unconscious by the fists of the victims left to starve on the endless queue.

The Friday night journey to Dock Kitchen, beside the Grand Union Canal in Ladbroke Grove, took 1 hour 50 minutes – over 30 minutes longer than the London Journey Planner estimate. Suffice to say that if you are going to travel nearly two hours to a Grand Canal you want it to be the one in Venice. That schlep, however, was no more bothersome than a November breeze when compared to our Saturday expedition to Richmond’s Petersham Nurseries. We left the house at 11am for a 12:30 lunch booking and arrived at 1:40pm. Royal Mail would have delivered us to our destination more quickly than the District line.

Steven Biondolillo is a respected marketing consultant who should be famous for his radius restaurant-rating system. Instead of using stars or point scales to evaluate restaurants he scores them according to the distance you would be willing to travel to dine there. Under his radius system, elBulli might rate a 5,000 to indicate a radius of 5,000 miles within which the restaurant would be worth a detour. A sympathetic critic might award Subway sandwich shop a score of 0.00000013.

For London purposes the Biondolillo radius system needs to be revised. The journey from front door to first course must be measured in minutes, not miles. And so, if Petersham Farms, described by these two ultimately delighted Californians as “Chez Panisse in the English countryside”, merits a journey of 160 minutes, then award it a rating of 160.

Judged solely by my friends’ comments I have critiqued the London food tour as follows:

St. John Bread and Wine – 90 minutes
Present – 30 minutes
Monmouth – 30 minutes
Kappacasein – 40 minutes
Tayyabs – 60 minutes
De Gustibus – 20 minutes
Dock Kitchen – 30 minutes
Petersham Nurseries – 160 minutes

Of course it’s possible we appreciate things more when we experience great difficulties beforehand. The French have an expression for it: après l’effort le réconfort – “after effort comes comfort.” Sounds to me like a great poster slogan for Transport for London.

After pausing to have a sandwich and take some photos I introduced myself to Genti and Andrea and told them how pleased I was to see them braving the elements. Though it was a mild autumn day I could already imagine them as characters in a Dickensian winter streetscape, warming their frostbitten fingers over steaming briskets. Andrea (at right in photo below) is from Florence, where the most popular sandwich meat is not salt beef but rather lampredotto (boiled cow’s stomach). Andrea wanted to know what I thought of his suggestion that they offer salsa verde, the Tuscan parsley sauce used for panino di lampredotto, as a condiment for salt beef. “Hmmm,” I smiled, recalling drippy tripe sandwiches at Florence’s Mercato di San Lorenzo. “No, with salt beef it has to be mustard.”

The first August disappointment occurred at the De Gustibus sandwich carvery at Borough Market. It’s true, I did draw attention to inconsistency while rating DG salt beef as the 5th best in London. But I’d also identified meat colour as a reliable indicator of quality: pink = good, grey = bad. On this summer Friday the warm briskets appeared to be deep pink to their very core yet the slices of salt beef were dry and chewy.

Even more disturbing was a recent rendering of the Nosh Bar‘s SB, which I’d rated best in London. On the 14th of August, the meat I had described as surrendering to the chew and melting in the mouth was tough. It was difficult to tear into it with my teeth without dislodging entire slices from the sandwich. I might dismiss this as an off day were it not for the troubling manner in which the meat was carved. Without bothering to steady the hunk of brisket with a fork, much less lift it out of its puddle of broth, the cutter gingerly worked his knife through the meat and held each slice aloft to let the broth drip back down into the tray. Also troubling, the crusty rye bread used in the past had been replaced by a squishy one.

I see no other alternative but to post a notice of cancellation from my top 5: If De Gustibus and Nosh Bar cannot bounce back from a rubbery August to a tender September they’ll be struck off the list.

In a good sandwich the meat surrenders instantly to the chew, melting in the mouth and flooding it with flavour. There’s an easy test for tenderness: Pick up a single slice of salt beef, hold each end between thumb and forefinger and slowly pull the ends apart. If the meat stretches like rubber, that’s bad. If the meat breaks apart easily, that’s good.

When sourcing briskets that have already been cured, as most London salt beef bars do, meat texture comes down to cooking, conditioning and carving. First, the cured briskets should be patiently simmered for several hours. Second, the meat should be kept hot, wet and tender in a hot bath or steamer to within minutes of the time it is trimmed and carved – preferably hand-carved. Prolonged exposure to heat lamps will demoisturise the beef as surely as it would your skin.

It’s also important to have a crusty rye bread with enough density and chew to support the meat, an opinion not shared by the salt beef bars who seem to prefer thin slices from fluffy ryes better suited to afternoon tea. When you hold a sandwich you can feel the contours of the fillings through the flimsy bread. This is layer-upon-layer of sweaty brisket we’re talking about, not a single neat row of thinly sliced cucumber.

click here for map of top 5 salt beef sandwiches in London

5. Selfridges Brass Rail

The department store location is upmarket and so is the price: At £7.50 it’s the lone sandwich in the London top 5 that can’t be had for under a fiver. All the same, I love the fact that even after the recent move and refurnishing the Brass Rail salt beef bar has retaining its authenticity. It’s a London institution. Knowing regulars jockey for position on the queue, sitting back as an untested carver allocates the scrappier bits to others and pushing forward as an old hand cuts into pristine parts of a juicy new brisket. (Novelist Howard Jacobson wrote brilliantly about this moral minefield in this opinion piece for the Independent). That no two servings are exactly the same might be a greater source of anxiety were it not for another given: a Selfridges salt beef is never worse than extremely good. Now, if they would only upgrade the limp rye bread…
Selfridges Ground Floor, 400 Oxford Street, W1

4. Tongue & Brisket

24-26 Leather Lane, EC1N 7SU (map)

3. Salt Beef Bar

Not one for uncertainty, Chris Christopoulou named his son Chris and raised him to take his place at the salt beef bar called The Salt Beef Bar. The unambiguous name of this eatery in North West London did not, however, deter a man in a tracksuit from popping in and asking about vegetarian options. Chris Christopoulou the Younger must have figured he was about to outdo his father and become the first in his family to sell a mustard and gherkin sandwich. But the Adidas bloke walked out and Chris resumed what he does best: carefully trimming the briskets and carving the sort of pristinely pink slices of salt beef that make carnivores giddy. If only the rye bread were not so lacking in substance.
2 Monkville Parade, Finchley Road, NW11

2. B&K Salt Beef Bar

You don’t have to be Jewish to get the most out of this nonkosher deli, but it does help to know how to kibbitz. If John Georgiou, one of the Greek-Cypriot co-owners, is assembling your sandwich, be sure to stand close to the counter and tell him you think his brother Michael is more generous with the pristine house-cured salt beef. If Michael is wielding the carver’s knife and fork, advise him that John’s portions are a lot bigger. If you aren’t sure which brother is which, just make it known that nobody piles on the meat like Dina, John’s wife. Then, when one of the Georgious wraps up a sandwich too large to fit in anyone’s mouth whose name isn’t Lily Allen, ask for two extra slices of rye and have yourself two SBs for the price of one from one of the last salt beef bars left in London that brines its own briskets.
11 Lanson House, HA8

2. ZOBLER’S DELICATESSEN

1. MONTY’S DELI

227-229 Hoxton Street, N1 5LG,020 7729 5737