Bread Meats Bread
Brisket is one of those things that yes, you technically can cook at home, but realistically, is a total arse to do well, takes ages, and is only really suited to occasions where you have several hungry flesh eaters to satisfy. Add in the fact that the best brisket is smoked (we both know you don’t have a smoker), and honestly, you’re best leaving the work to somewhere that you can pick it from a menu.
Therein lies the (Texan) rub. Even in London, where the number of barbecue joints has risen faster than the rent on a Hackney garage, there’s still a lot of misses amongst the odd true hit (as The Picky Glutton will tell you). So what hope have you got in Scotland? Well, you might be alright, as it turns out.
Glasgow’s Bread Meats Bread has been punting appropriately carnivorous fodder since December 2012, on a fairly unremarkable corner of St Vincent Street. It’s a tightly packed little place (some might say greedily so) but it suits the restaurant’s fast turnaround, burgers and BBQ grub to a tee – enamel plates, rough wood tables and filament bulbs complete the textbook canteen picture.
Still, we’re here to talk about sandwiches (mostly), so let’s not dwell on the fit and finish. As you’d expect, given the name, there’s an abundance of bready options, ranging from humble grilled cheese through to eleven quid’s worth of sirloin cheesesteak. Yowza. Sitting somewhere in the middle, we have the BBQ brisket.
BBQ Brisket Sandwich | £7
This big heap of house-smoked beef comes on a long bun, shredded, with onions, leaves and a liberal slug of gravy over the top. It’s served open, and closes about as easily as an overstuffed suitcase. This presentation serves up a bit of a conundrum, in a couple of ways. Firstly, figuring out how you’re meant to eat it without getting totally drenched in juices (it’s a six napkin effort) and secondly, making it hard to get a read on how well the meat’s been cooked, seeing as it’s pulled off the joint rather than carved. It’s tender, no doubt, and the beef’s moist beyond the sauce, but the overall flavour is unbalanced. While the gravy is rich, glossy and deeply beefy, it’s incredibly heavy on the pepper, and the smokiness – one of the most delicious things about a well-smoked brisket – is lost in the fug. It’s very, very close to being a great sandwich, but the overzealous seasoning knocks it back.
You might think this means I’m unimpressed – that’s not true. If there’s one thing that was apparent, it’s that Bread Meats Bread is utterly capable of making a top-flight sandwich – hell, I’ll be back to try their other efforts (although maybe not the cheesesteak, unless someone else is paying). That said, going to all the effort of house-smoking your own brisket begs for a sauce that compliments, rather than stifles your hard work. At any rate, it’s almost there – a little tinker, and maybe a little less reliance on the gravy for flavour, and this would be a banger.
