The Brass Rail, Selfridges, Oxford Street, London W1. Meal for two, including drinks and service, £30
They fixed it and it wasn’t broken. What they’ve done isn’t fatal, but it is silly. For years, for decades even, the Brass Rail inside Selfridges on Oxford Street, a place famed for its salt beef, had a straightforward system. You queued up to stand before the two meat cutters, and gave them your order: a half or whole sandwich of salt beef, tongue or pastrami. They barked questions at you. White or rye bread? Mustard? Pickle? You answered quickly. They speared pink lumps of steaming animal on to the chopping board, sliced it thick, threw it on the scales where the bread was already waiting, and moved you along. No order ever got a glimmer of approval. This was a serious business. Get on with it. Behind you would be a queue of people desperate for their salt-beef fix. They didn’t take kindly to being kept waiting.
You took your tray to the cashier who barely made eye contact. She examined your tray, did the sums and charged you. It was swift and functional. The only thing that could hold it up was some alter kocker – it’s Yiddish for old fart – who hadn’t made up his mind while in the queue; an act of indecision to be met with a whole wind section of grunts and sighs from everybody else. Otherwise it worked.
So now they have relaunched the Brass Rail and they have reversed the system. You give an order to the cashier, then go round to the cutter who is now completely flummoxed by having to pull tickets off a printer and work out whose order is whose. It’s a small change, but it’s had a large impact. Behind me, as my sizable order is serviced, the queue builds. Later, people complain to me about the system. This is not simply an objection to newness. It’s an objection to the new that isn’t as efficient as the old.
Thankfully the salt beef is as good as ever (with one caveat, which I’ll come to). The Brass Rail was, like me, born in 1966. When I first started going there, it was on a wood-lined mezzanine outside the food hall, all dark varnish and, as the name says, shiny brass rail, only later moving inside the food hall to a brightly lit space where it is today. Almost 20 years ago, when I started writing Day of Atonement, a novel about two Jewish boys who launch a world-beating business on the back of a machine for taking the fat off chicken soup quickly, I would visit for inspiration.
My characters, Mal and Solly, would go into the deli business so it seemed a good fit. Really, it was just an excuse for eating great salt beef. The coincidence of Day of Atonement’s publication in eBook for the first time, and the relaunch of the Brass Rail, just as Yom Kippur comes upon us next week, was likewise an excuse for going there.
To understand the place you need to look at Selfridges’ location on a London map. Yes, it’s on Oxford Street. But look directly north and you see first St John’s Wood, then Swiss Cottage, and beyond it Golders Green and Finchley. Selfridges has always had a large kosher trade from the Jewish community for whom it is literally down the road. They have always come to the (non-kosher) Brass Rail for a hit of those Ashkenazi Jewish favourites. This is food shaped by the imperatives of poverty and exodus. You salt and smoke large cuts of beef only because you cannot afford the fresh. You pickle cucumbers to preserve them through Polish winters. Then you get a taste for them.
From that imperative emerges a culinary grammar. For a long while, the Brass Rail – along with Harry Morgan, Reubens and a few other places – had this to themselves. But then the street-food boom happened, and the influence of New York on London increased. Many others now serve killer salt beef, most notably Monty’s Deli on Druid Street by Tower Bridge (full disclosure: it’s the brainchild of my colleague Eva Wiseman’s other half Mark Ogus). Almost everywhere seems to do a pulled-pork roll and mac’n’cheese, which the innovations on the new menu appear to be reacting to.
So witness: the Brass Rail bialy roll. A bialy is similar to a bagel, only baked rather than boiled, and with an onion-filled indentation rather than a hole. Here it is filled with a sweet barbecue-sauced pulled salt beef – putting pork on the menu would kill half their business, kosher or no – with Swiss cheese, gherkins, tomatoes and a sweet relish. It’s a whacking £9.50, but a hell of a sandwich. Have this for lunch and you can skip dinner. Go for the Reuben instead and you can skip breakfast the next day as well. It’s vast, the size of a baby’s head: two layers of thick-cut salt beef top and bottom, the crunch of sauerkraut in between, Swiss cheese and dressing. At £14.95 for a whole sandwich, it looks like enthusiastic pricing. Then again this is Selfridges.
Mac’n’cheese is a disaster. It’s served lukewarm, the roux-heavy sauce coagulating in the bottom of its ceramic bowl within minutes. Much better is a deep-fried croquette of salt beef and potato hash, served as a breakfast option with soft-yoked boiled eggs. Put from your mind the thought that this just happens to be a brilliant way for them to use up the nub ends of the briskets they haven’t been able to carve up for sandwiches.
As to those salt beef sandwiches, they are still the main draw. The meat isn’t overly salty, comes in slices half an inch thick and in a stack the depth of a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica covering the letters E or S. A smear of English mustard, a crunchy pickle and life is good. The caveat: no fat. I understand that some people like their salt beef without the fat. That’s fair enough. They’re wrong – a bit of the amber jellied fat lubricates and punches the flavour – but I understand. Traditionally at the Brass Rail you were always asked “fat on or fat off?” Now, they don’t even ask. I imagine this is a mark of progress, like the new red-leather banquettes, and the shiny Brass Rail sign, the pulled-beef bun, and the ordering system. But I’m a romantic; I like things the old way. With fat on.
Day of Atonement is available as a Kindle Special from Amazon (£2.99)
Jay’s news bites
■ For more hot salt beef on rye action, I’m hearing interesting things about Ira B’s in Leeds, where a full head-sized sandwich costs £8.50. The menu includes chicken soup, chopped liver, egg and onion, and pickles. Apparently they only do bagels on Sunday mornings, which is as it should be. Reports please (ira-bs.co.uk).
■ Welcome to give4sure, a way of fundraising for charities through your purchases. Retailers, including Tesco and John Lewis, make a donation to your designated charity every time you shop with them through the app. Charities which have signed up to work with the app include the Food Chain, which gives nutritional advice to people with HIV (and of which I’m a patron; no wonder I’m so keen on the idea) give4sure.co.uk.
■ Calling all misanthropes: get hold of a box of ‘misfortune cookies’. The crisp black curls of biscuit contain messages like ‘Happy? It won’t last.’ And ‘At least I believe in you. Me. A piece of paper.’ Sweet, eh? Available from prezzybox.com.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
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