Beigel Bake’s salt beef as rubbery as ever

dansyoung — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:41:57 +0000

If I can prevent just one of Brick Lane’s nocturnal foragers from yielding to the temptation of a Beigel Bake hot salt beef sandwich my move from New York to London will have proven a success. I appreciate that the Beigel Bake is a London institution, a revered relic of the Jewish East End and a valued 24/7 resource. But the thick slices of salt beef layered on its sandwiches are so rubbery and springy you would think the beef briskets were sourced from Michelin – its tyre/tire division, not its restaurant guides. Taking on that sandwich is an exercise in chew-aerobics, with precious little support from the sadly limp rye bread. The few molecules of moisture remaining in the congealed meat are instantly sponged by the bread. In this instance a beigel is better, preferably without the salt beef.

If you ignore conventional wisdom and instead let any of the top 5 salt beef sandwiches in London be your guide you’ll reach this conclusion: The Beigel Bake’s salt beef is not the way salt beef should be. The great advantage of salt-curing and maturing meat, as Claudia Roden writes in The Book of Jewish Food, is that it “imparts delicious taste and results in a particularly tender texture.” That’s not how it is with the pickled briskets drying out under the heat lamps in the window of the beloved Beigel Bake.

Claudia Roden | YOUNG & FOODISH

Beigel Bake’s salt beef as rubbery as ever