London’s Salt Beef and Beigels

Salt beef on a beigel at Beigel Bake on Brick Lane, London.

LONDON – I love that no matter where you go in the world, if there were Jews there at one point, there’s likely to be cured meat and smoked fish (and occasionally bagels). As I learned last weekend – sandwiched between three consecutive Indian dinners – there is, of course, a long tradition of salt beef, or what we Yanks called corned beef.

In case you didn’t realize, there is no “corn” in corned beef. In the good old days, the grains of salt that people used to cure their brisket (long before refrigeration of course) resembled large corn kernels, hence the term “corned” beef. In London, they’re more direct, and frankly, more accurate. Here, you simply ask for a “salt beef” with or without mustard and in some cases, with or without gherkins (pickles). If you’re on Brick Lane, heading down the street to go check out the Rough Trade Record shop, you’ll be faced with two nearly identical beigel bakeries.

At Beigel Bake, like New York City and other reputable bagel capitals, they boil and then bake them off. But here, they’re soft and chewy, and lack any kind of firmness or significant density. They’re almost pillowy, and absorb the flavors of whatever you place inside of them, like a soft po’boy loaf or a thick hunk of Wonder Bread. I’m not sure I care for this quality in my beigels. But their salt beef is delicious. Juicy and pink from the salt cure, it’s sliced against the grain, kissed with yellow mustard and stacked high between the inferior halves of the “beigel” (oh what I would have given to have had a real Montreal bagel, a la St-Viateur, imbued with honey and baked off in a wood-fired oven). It ain’t no Katz’s, but as Calvin Trillin would say, I wouldn’t throw rocks at it either.

A couple of doors down, the Beigel Shop offers the same goods, but we noticed they sliced their salt beef with the grain (a no-no), resulting in a tougher, slightly stringier sandwich. We loved the addition of gherkins here, but the inferior slicing, the fact they had to microwave the hunks of beef (!!) and then serve them on squishy spheres of baked dough just didn’t warrant an Instagram homage.