Sabrina reviews Big Apple Hot Dogs, Old Street

These look absolutely amazing! Have to try them soon!

Link: Sabrina's Passions

Bratwurst, Berwick St.

Apologies for the lack of posts in recent months. Unfortunately the blog has dropped a little on my list of priorities but I haven't forgotten about it!

And what better way to revive Sausage and Bread than with a brand new review? When you see the exterior of this newly opened establishment in Soho, you can see why I felt the need to start posting again...




Yep, The Bratwurst does indeed appear to be an honest attempt to bring the classic German streetfood to the UK. This branch (the second in the UK chain, the other is in Broadgate Circle) only opened recently - early July, I believe - so is very much a new face on the Soho scene.

Will it finally crack the secret of being a sausage and bread food retailer in the UK or will it follow in the footsteps of Olly Olson and The Gourmet Hotdog Company, and fail?

The menu starts promisingly with a list of half a dozen authentic German sausages (made by award winning butchers, the signage tells us). Besides the classic pork Bratwurst you can also choose beef, turkey, cheesey, oniony and boiled variations.

I opted for a 'double meal deal' consisting of a Bratwurst, a Mettwurst (smoked pork and beef sausage served boiled), brötchen and sauerkraut.




Let's deal with the sides first: The sauerkraut was very pungent and sour which guess is how it's supposed to be. The vinegar sharpness made it perfect for cutting through the heavier meat. The brötchen was fresh and tasty; Crispy on the outside, cracking open to reveal a fluffy and non-industrial interior. Nice to see that they have paid attention to the bread here.

The sausages were both very good indeed. The Bratwurst (cut into pieces by a special sausage cutting machine) was nicely browned yet still drippingly moist on the inside. Lightly seasoned with a very thin casing that made for very good eating.

The Mettwurst was a surprise. Even though it is served boiled the sausage is actually very dense and dark. It reminded me a lot of an Italian salsicce. Slightly saltier than the Brat, it was still very moist and bursting with juices with every bite.

What completes the meal is of the course the essential German yellow mustard - wonderfully mild and moreish and the perfect accompaniment to the sausages.



All in all, The Bratwurst is a success and definitely worth a visit. The question is will the people of London frequent it enough? It sells fast food that is far and away better than what you get in more famous fast food chains. But the store resembles a coffee shop, or boutique eatery. So is it trying to to lure customers away from EAT and Pret when it should perhaps be targetting the KFC/Nandos/McDonalds crowd?

The other meal options on offer at The Bratwurst seem a little confused and odd (Bratwurst salad, anyone? Sausage and nachos?) They clearly want to cover some extra bases to appeal to customers aren't grabbed by the conventional style of serving. But in my opinion they should just stay true to the classic streefood style (and perhaps start offering chips and mayo).

5 out of 5
Let's hope it survives!

Website: The Bratwurst

Greggs (nationwide)

Photo: avtost

This is an interesting one. Greggs the Bakers are present on just about every high street in Britain. Compared to the chains I've previously reviewed, Greggs is much more widespread and prevalent but it is perceived by many as being of inferior quality to say, Pret a Manger or Eat.

This is unfair I think. Their products may be made on a large scale but that is not to say they are bad and in fact studying the Greggs' nutritional information shows that for a number of items Pret a Manger's equivalents are actually less healthy and higher in calories and fat (see the two companies' egg or tuna sandwiches).

Back in February Greggs officially launched a new breakfast range but it was only recently that I noticed the new menu and was able to try their sausage breakfast roll



What a pleasant surprise. In most small cafes, sausages are cooked, allowed to cool, stored in a chilled cabinet and then reheated when served. This results in sausages with a compressed, airless, paste-like texture and a tremendous amount of taste and subtlety is lost.

In contrast, the Greggs sausages must have been cooked fresh that morning. They were wonderfully moist inside, with a springy, satisfying, tasty filling. I wouldn't say they were gourmet sausages and the salt content is perhaps on the high side (3.8 grams for the entire roll), but for what is in effect a mass produced sandwich (on a par with a McDonalds hamburger) the quality and flavour are impressive.

The bread roll is, as you would expect from a bakery, fresh and pleasant to eat. The only condiment choices are tomato or brown sauce but they are genuine Heinz ketchup and HP - another plus point.

All in all, this is a great ambassador for the sausage and bread combo. Importantly, we are talking here about a good quality sausage and bread roll that can be bought on just about every high street in the UK. That's something I've been hoping for since I started this blog, all those years ago!

5 out of 5. A very good sandwich with top marks for availability.

Make Mine, Dean Street

makeMINE is popular sandwich shop with the Soho crowd. Most afternoons you will invariably see more than one of their purple and white bags being carried back to an office somewhere and there is usually a queue extending out the front door.

The shop is like a Subway but much better in that you choose a sandwich from a set menu and it is made fresh for you. But their combinations are much better and the quality a lot higher than that of the ubiquitous sandwich chain. They also do soups and salads.

The sausage sandwich is part of their breakfast menu and only required a short wait before I was able to take it away.




What we have is a couple of moderately good quality, small Cumberland sausages sliced, in toasted granary bread for £2.25. It was overall a curiously boring sausage sarnie. The sausages have been cooked some time ago and reheated so they have a pasty, compressed texture to them. The bread was quite tasteless being a generic, catering granary variety. There was nothing particularly bad about it - to be sure you will find worse - but then again there was nothing really good about it either.

2 out of 5.

Randall and Aubin, Brewer Street

Randall and Aubin has one of the most appealing shop fronts in Soho, if not the whole of London. Originally a butcher's shop, it is now known to denizens of Soho as a lively place for great seafood, wine as well as rotisserie items such as roast chicken, not to mention great french fries.

It has a wonderful, open, bustling atmosphere and is that rare (in London) combination of being a casual and accessible restaurant yet also high quality.

Personally I've always liked their fresh seafood selection more than the hot menu but with a sausage baguette on the menu, how could I possibly resist?



The offering is actually a sausage baguette plus french fries for £5.00 (takeaway) and on balance I think this is a good deal; Randall and Aubin's fries are hard to beat.

The sausage baguette is substantial and good quality but it's underwhelming. It's a case of the product not living up to the promise of such an appealing venue.

The 2 sausages (on the main restaurant menu they are described as pork and honey sausages) are unembellished with any herbs or outstanding flavourings. The darkness of the cooked outer casings suggest they are deep fried (perhaps alongside the fries?) rather than griddled. The addition of plain sliced tomato helps but overall there is a feeling of pallid dryness and a lack of 'oomph', flavour-wise. More delicate cooking might extract more out of the sausages.



For £5 you do get a very satisfying sausage, bread and fries combo that is hard to fault for value for money but one that is, I'm afraid, unlikely to get your taste buds excited.

3 out of 5 (1 point for the fries)

Link: Randall and Aubin

Oh no! Goodbye, Farmer Brown! (Il Castelletto, New Row)

This is a truly devastating revelation. The little known, out-of-the-way cafe that (in my opinion) served the best straightforward sausage sandwich in central London is no more.

It has been replaced by a generic 'Italian' cafe called Il Castelleto which, at the time of reviewing, had not even fully removed the old signage from its shopfront.

Once I was over the shock of Farmer Brown's demise, I decided to try the new establishment out in the hope that they had retained the same supplier of sausages:



They hadn't. I'm afraid what would once have been a delicious sandwich filled with two fat Cumberland sausages, has been replaced by a bland sarnie indistinguishable from those bought in many other Soho cafes. Microwaved at my request (because the shop's griddle had not been turned on and would have taken 5 minutes to heat up), the sausage was your usual salty, flavourless cafe fare, and the bread was no more than ordinary.

1 out of 5. RIP Farmer Brown. you will be sorely missed.

Caffe Milan, Shaftesbury Avenue

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates recently. After a spell out of the country, I'm finally back in London and what better way to brighten up a drab, winter morning than with a sausage sarnie?

Caffe Milan is located on the Covent Garden/Soho border, a few steps from Cambridge Circus. The first impression when you walk in is how clean and modern the interior is for a cafe. The menu covers the usual bases with the addition of a small salad bar. Overall the impression is that everything seems carefully prepared, although their on-display panini look a little meagre with their fillings.



But what of their toasted sausage sandwich on brown bread? Well, the sausage is what I would call a 'catering Cumberland'. It has the speckled appearance of a well herbed sausage but lacks little in texture and flavour. It's quite generic. What can't be faulted though is generous serving of two fat sausages in each sandwich. Many establishments try to fob you off with one sausage cut into slices but not here. For £2.20 it's a good value, if unremarkable sarnie from a well-maintained establishment.

2.5 our of 5 Good value for money

4 Market Place

Market Place is one of London's pleasant surprises. If you don't know it, it's a small pedestrianized precinct just north of Oxford Street. Within one block you go from the sometimes unbearable crowds and tacky shopfronts of Oxford Street to a little oasis of calm that's packed with decent places to eat, drink or have a coffee.

There are several restaurants and cafes to choose from but one place that's quite easy to miss is 4 Market Place.

4 Market Place is a rare thing: It's a basement cafe. If you were to walk past quickly, you might not even realize it was there. I really like the novelty of having to walk down some steps to get to the front door. It gives the place an air of clandestine exclusivity you don't often get with cafes. So it's a great shame the toasted sausage sandwich on brown I ordered didn't live up to the promising location.



It wasn't a bad sandwich, just mediocre. The sausage was quite salty and lacking in flavour. The toasted bread bland. On the plus side, the price (£1.80) was a bargain for central London. Just think what an amazing place this would be if it served really great food.

2 out of 5

Westfield Shopping Centre, Shepherds Bush

Westfield Shopping Centre opened in 2008 and is supposedly the largest city-centre mall in Europe. As well as the 265 retail units, the mall also boasts 50 food outlets. The numbers sound promising but how easy would it be to get myself some decent sausage and bread in this colosseum of consumerism?

Despite its size, the mall is actually quite easy to walk around as it's arranged like a figure of eight, with a couple of offshoots here and there. The choice of places to eat is varied, cosmopolitan and focussed around an area named The Balcony: This upmarket food court has had some good early publicity and rightly so, I think, as it does put the typical UK shopping centre food court to shame.

There isn't a Singapore Sam or KFC in sight. Instead you have places like innovative Vietnamese soup noodle bar Pho and risotto specialists Ooze. It would be difficult to find a greater concentration of good-to-adequate places to eat anywhere else in London.

After a scout around, I decided there were two places I needed to try, the first being Birley Sandwiches.


Birley is an established chain of sandwich shops based mainly in the City and Docklands. The Westfield outlet is the company's first foray into the wilds of West London. At this branch the menu is built around a rotisserie so roasts such as pork, beef and chicken feature heavily. Also on offer were large, pork sausages:



Had I not been on blogging duty, I would have gone for the roast pork and apple sauce sandwich as it looked great but the sausages looked promising too.

The server asks you for your choice of condiment right at the start, and I requested English mustard. Rather incompetently, the server then slathered both slices of bread (a crusty, bloomer type loaf) with a full layer of mustard - I guess you could call it American style. Unfortunately, once I got the sandwich to my table and took a bite, I realised that so much mustard had been used that the sandwich was almost inedible. Every bite was accompanied by a wave of sinus-destroying mustard gas and it was impossible to taste anything else. After discarding the bread, I was able to tell that the sausage was fairly good quality but on the dry side (probably due to being left out too long). The bread seemed fresh enough. More thoughtful condiments and a fresher sausage would have made a big difference.

1.5 out of 5. Potentially good but badly executed.

Almost directly opposite Birley was the second outlet I wanted to try: Croque Gascon.




This is a very different proposition to Birley Sandwiches. Croque Gason has some serious heritage as it's an offshoot of Michelin-starred restaurant Club Gascon

The menu is extremely inventive and ambitious for a shopping centre eatery but also cleverly designed so that the dishes can be made freshly and relatively quickly. No prizes for guessing what I ordered: The Gascon Hot Dog

Officially described as a 'pork sausage on plum mustard bread', the hot dog is made to order in what looks very much like a proper restaurant kitchen. There is a short wait whilst the sausage is heated up, the bread toasted and the sandwich assembled.



The sausage was fragrant, nicely browned and still hot. The bread was crisply toasted and tasty. Shards of gherkin added a little zing. All in all this was an exceptional sausage sandwich (and the contrast to Birley's couldn't be greater).

5 out of 5. Excellent.

Cafe Miro, Great Queen Street

A little off the beaten track, this one. Cafe Miro is located in a street near the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It's almost literally in the shadow of Freemasons' Hall, the grand headquarters of the Freemasons' 'United Grand Lodge'.

I've no idea if Cafe Miro gets any Masonic customers from across the road. I certainly wasn't greeted with any weird handshakes but the quiet, clean, well maintained interior did have a mildly eccentric atmosphere. This might have been due to the fact that on the morning I went, the clientele inside consisted of a businessman in a suit, three Community Support Officers and Rick Wakeman. Yes, the Rick Wakeman.

I ordered a sausage baguette and a cup of tea.



The buttered baguette was fresh and of a generic type often found in cafes - not terrible but not great either. Slightly bland and a little pale and underbaked. The sausage was unremarkable too, its speckling of herbs promising a level flavour that wasn't really there.

2.5 out of 5. Quite a bland sausage sarnie but a caff with a nice interior.

The Breakfast Club, D'Arblay St

Great name for a cafe. I wonder why no-one's thought of it before?



There are two branches of Breakfast Club, this one in Soho which opened in 2005 and another in Camden Passage in Angel which opened in 2007.




Inside you are greeted by nice, friendly staff and a ragtag-style interior made up of seemingly reclaimed items of furniture. The atmosphere is either Bohemian or cheap, depending on how you look at it, and reminded me of places I would frequent as a student. It's certainly a place with character and a great alternative to the ubiquitous chain coffee shops.

One word of warning: I sat at the back of the cafe and noticed that the cooking smells from the kitchen were quite strong so I'd recommend trying to sit at the front if you can.

The menu is has a very un-British feel to it. By that I mean it's something I would expect to find in the US or maybe Australia; Wraps, smoothies and salads all feature heavily as well as the more conventional breakfast items. Obviously, the sausage sandwich was all I was interested in.




This was quite a hefty sausage sandwich, made with thick slices of a good quality, fresh bread and two sausages. The sausages were meaty and of decent quality. Overall the sandwich seemed a little dry - perhaps due to the thickness of the bread or the amount of time the sausages had been cooking. Still, it's a substantial and satisfying sandwich made with ingredients that won't fill you with remorse after eating. Can't fault the price either.

3.5 out of 5 (Bohemian in a rickety chair kind of way)

Website: The Breakfast Club Soho

Canteen, Spitalfields Market

It's believed that there has been a market at Spitalfields in the East End of London (corner of Lamb and Commercial Street) since the thirteenth century. The market survived the Great Fire of London, declined after the 1820s before reviving again when it was redeveloped in 1893. The market expanded steadily until it had to be moved to larger premises in Leyton in 1991. The old site was then extensively redeveloped in 2005 and is now a covered market for small stalls with a range of restaurants and cafes.

It's a nice area to walk around: You leave the bustle of Liverpool Station, surrounded by the tower blocks of London's financial district and within minutes you're in the wide open market with its eclectic range of shops. Step beyond the market and the East End streets are full of character - there's an undeniably interesting feel about the place.

There's a fairly good mix of places to eat too although not quite the grazer's heaven that is Borough Market. After a quick scout around, I decided to give Canteen a try.




There are three Canteen restaurants, all in London. The mini-chain is devoted to high quality British food served in fashionably retro-modern surroundings that are like a cross between a library, a train station waiting room and a works canteen.

As you probably guessed the prices and not very canteen-like and the high quality of the ingredients used in the cooked-to-order menu is reflected in the prices.

I visited in the mid-morning and decided to go for the sausage and roast onion sandwich at £5.75.




This is more than I would normally expect to pay for a sausage sandwich so I was fairly skeptical when the sandwich arrived but I didn't have to be.

What you get are two, dense, pork sausages. Not strongly seasoned or herbed, fairly well cooked although I would have liked them a little more browned. The casings were thin. They are very good, thick, plain pork sausages. The roasted onions were sweet and soft and were not overcooked. The bread was little on the thin side and the melted butter - whilst it tasted very nice - did make the sandwich quite soggy. So much so that I didn't feel like I could add any condiments otherwise the whole thing might have fallen apart into a wet, messy pile.

Taste-wise everything worked. The onions were mild and complimented the meat. The buttered bread had its own flavour and wasn't overpowered. The only minor quibbles are that I'd have preferred a more distinctly flavoured sausage, cooked until a little more brown.

I initially was going to mark the sandwich down because of its price but by the end, the quality of the ingredients shone through and 6 quid for a very good sausage sandwich in these surroundings is not a bad deal, I think. Worth a visit.

4.5 out of 5

Link: Canteen

The Sausage and Bread Top 5 2008

Hard to believe it's been a year since my last Top 5. I've discovered loads of new places over the last 12 months and the thing that strikes me is how the bar has been raised in terms of easily available, good quality sausage and bread.

Your average greasy spoon cafe might still be selling nasty, 'economy' sausages but there seem to be more and more gourmet outlets springing up and newer sandwich shops tend to make sure they at least have a half decent Cumberland on the menu. Recent bad press about cheap, processed meat products and a general demand for better quality food may be the reasons.

As for the places reviewed in this blog: The Gourmet Hot Dog Company has survived for another year and while it's possible to get a West Virginian hot dog that isn't too shabby, its cooked-on-rollers sausages are a bit uninspiring.

Eat is probably the leading chain outlet with its grilled sausage muffin proving to be reliably tasty. Leon and Benugo's sausage and bread offerings perhaps proved that image isn't everything - both were quite disappointing.

The Diner deserves credit for its attention to detail and faithful reproduction of an American menu. Its chili cheese dog is a must try but the price and stodginess are negatives.

Cafe Soho continues to be a great sandwich shop but unfortunately its been forced out of the Top 5. Not because of any drop in quality, but because new places have muscled their way into the list. I re-visited recently and it still thoroughly deserves a 'Recommended' tag.

The 2008 Sausage and Bread Top 5 for London

5 - BAR BRUNO


Soho is literally being knocked down and rebuilt around it, but Bar Bruno continues to dish out a fantastic toasted pork sausage sandwich, prepared quickly. I was sure Bruno's was going to drop out of the list this year but a re-visit proved me wrong. Long live Bar Bruno.

4 - FERNANDEZ AND WELLS


The chorizo and roasted pepper ciabatta is a favourite. One of the stars of Soho.

3 - THE HONEST SAUSAGE




On my first visit I thought the Honest Sausage's location was a negative being out of the way and requiring a special effort to get to it. Now I've changed my mind and I've decided the setting in Regent's Park should be seen as a plus not a minus. On a sunny autumn day, what could be better than an organic sausage in fluffy white bun, eaten outside surrounded by squirrels, trees and a wide open park? Welcome to the Top 5, Honest sausage.


2 - FARMER BROWN



I've made multiple repeat visits to Farmer brown since I discovered it earlier this year. They make a sausage sandwich that is actually moreish. The owner has told me they get regulars who come to the cafe just for the fat, juicy Cumberland sausages.


1 - PAUL (salami baguette)


Yes, I'm afraid the long-standing number 1 has retained its spot. It remains the perfect combination of sausage and bread, in my opinion.

Do you know of any other places that serve great sausage sandwiches or hot dogs? Drop me a line with anything sausagey and bready that you'd like to share.

Here's to another year of outstanding sausage and bread!

Dec 2008

Benugo, Great Portland Street

Benugo has been around for about 10 years but this is the first time I've visited.




The shop, which specializes is grilled sandwiches, has a deli feel to it and is quite spacious. They have recently introduced free wi-fi for customers too.

I'm not sure if I got the ordering system right on my visit. Do you order you food at the deli counter section and then pay at the till? Or order at the till? Whichever it is, the system is a bit confusing and you seem to end up waiting in two queues and then milling around at the end as you wait for your food.

I ordered a cumberland sausage sandwich in a crusty roll, part of the breakfast menu.




I suppose it shows that appearances can be deceptive. Despite Benugo's funky, designer look the sandwich was a let down. A bland, squashed, flaky bread roll concealed a sliced cumberland sausage that was in need of a bit more heating up. Not much love of food was apparent. I might have expected something like this from an anonymous, side-street cafe but not from somewhere with such a bright, cosmopolitan image.

As always with a negative review, I can't slam an entire establishment based soley on its sausage sandwich. For all I know Benugo's other food could be outstanding. But for the purposes of this blog, I have to put Benugo in the 'don't bother' pile (unless you really need somewhere with free wi-fi).

1 out of 5

Leon (various locations)

I discovered recently that the trendy, 'fast food that is healthy' chain Leon has an extensive breakfast menu.

Besides a variety of porridges, yoghurts, fruit and smoothies, they also sell a sausage bap, a bacon bap, a mushroom and tomato bap and an 'I Love England' bap which is basically all of the above combined into one sandwich.

Naturally, I went for the sausage bap:




What we have here is a wholemeal bun encasing a couple of thin pork sausages with a homemade-style tomato sauce.

The bread was quite dense and I'm not sure its musty, wholemeal taste combined very well with the tomato sauce. As for the sauce, it lacked the tartness you normally get with ketchup and seemed a little watery.

The sausages themselves were pretty good but were small and their flavour was drowned out somewhat by the sauce and the bread. All in all it was just a mush of flavours that didn't really compliment one another.

It felt healthy but was a little unsatisfying. The concept behind Leon is that you order your food at a counter and get it quickly - like a fast food restaurant - but the dishes themselves are designed to be as unlike junk food as possible (healthy, made with fresh, natural ingredients etc.).

So if you want to eat healthily, I think Leon is a great choice but I sometimes find their food lacks the taste hit that makes 'bad' fast food so popular. Their evening menu looks a little more promising.

If you want a sausage sandwich from a chain such as this, I would recommend Eat's toasted sausage muffin instead.

2.5 out of 5. Guilt-free but not very tasty.