Sure there were peasants who by circumstance or choice sought out the fattier bits of fatty meats. They regarded the streaks of marbling running through beef as thoroughfares of flavour and happiness. But it’s unlikely many striving for acceptance in genteel London managed to be as unabashed about their preference for the bad white stuff as Walter Matthau, who, as Oscar Madison in Neil Simon‘s The Odd Couple, tells the New York waitress: “Give me a corned beef on rye, all fat.”

Euphemism crept into the brine for salt beef when the British counterpart to New York Jewish corned beef moved up from London’s East End to to its West End. In the 1950s, if you stepped into one of the salt beef bars on Great Windmill Street and wanted a cutter like Bambos Georgiou to make you a sandwich with enough fat left on the meat to clog even your peripheral arteries you didn’t say so in quite those words. Likewise, the proper punters who followed Georgiou to the Brass Rail, the salt beef bar he helped open at Selfridges London flagship in 1966, used three polite, deceptively undemanding words to communicate their partiality for cuttings of the unlean variety.

And even now in the naughty post-Naughties, when trendy eaters are less inclined to have their meat trimmed of fat than their fat trimmed of meat, you mustn’t say as much to the cutters at B & K, the suburban salt beef bar Georgiou opened with Jerry Kosimar in 1967. If you do so at either the original location in Edgware or the newer Harrow outpost one of his sons, Michael or John, may correct your English, as he did mine.

“The next time you come in,” advised John Georgiou, “if you want it that way just ask for it ‘as it comes'”.

By this he meant fat-glistening slices of salt beef cut from a brisket with its fat side left largely intact. Untrimmed. As it comes.

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