At its best, Nosh Bar’s succulent salt beef surrenders to the chew, melting in the mouth and flooding it with flavor. At its less than best, the meat can be tepid and a bit soggy. The rye bread, cut into desirably thick slices, is sufficiently crusty and chewy to accommodate the meat and mustard. Other salt beef bars tend to use limp rye bread through which you can feel the damp, fatty met in your hands.

Salt beef, known as pickled beef in the north of England, is a Jewish deli meat comparable to New York corned beef. The benefits of curing brisket, the cut used for salt beef, were originally twofold: First, the salt preserved the meat and killed bacteria, which greatly extended its storage life in the pre-refrigeration era. Second, the salt softened and broke down the tough brisket while letting its flavors slowly develop.

Most salt beef bars do not prepare their meat from scratch. Nosh Bar sources its cured briskets from Henson’s Famous Salt Beef in North London, which uses meat from grass-fed Irish steers and heifers. (If you live in the UK you can have Henson’s briskets, cooked or uncooked, delivered to your door). This hardly means that anyone who sources meat from Henson’s will achieve the same results as Nosh Bar. Cured salt beef requires hours of careful simmering to further tenderize the meat and sweat out its fatty juices. Furthermore, expert trimming and hand-slicing can make all the difference. Maintaining the quality of Nosh Bar’s salt beef ultimately depends less on sourcing than on diligence, theirs as well as ours. They need to baby their briskets and take care with every slice of every sandwich. And it is up to us to admonish them if and when they don’t. A salt beef bar is no place for British reserve. We’ve already lost the Nosh Bar once. Let’s not let it happen again.

The Nosh Bar – 39 Great Windmill Street, London; 020 7734 5638. Open M-Th, noon-midnight; F-Sa noon-2am. Closed Sundays. MAP