Meat and Bread
721 Yates St.
Victoria, BC

This small franchise operation has one great thing going for it. They source their ingredients locally. Whether the operation is running in Seattle, Vancouver or Victoria, just who they look to begins with finding that right bread to put their roasted meats into. The Victoria-based operation gets theirs from Crust Bakery on Fort which is a few blocks away. I should’ve checked what kind of bread that was because I’m craving more of this to toast up at home!

Although that would defeat my purpose to be in town, I can at least create more different combinations when my desire to include heirloom tomatoes and swiss cheese is needed. Here, most of the sandwiches are more meat based. Their Porchetta: Salsa Verde is just as tasty as Roast‘s and cheaper by 50 cents. Both are excellent I would not want to say which is better. The nicely crisped up bread is what did the trick here, and I could not rave any more about that.

This shoppe does have daily specials that’s worth paying attention to. They also have happy hour specials that includes beer. A bit of alcohol is nice, and the only sad bit about this operation is no fruit juices are available. I settled for the traditional Phillips Ginger Ale, the Sparkmouth, instead of water, and that’d be the only real quibble I’d have to make about this operation’s liquid offerings. In terms of meat and sauces, I did notice that the latter is made in-house. The mustard certainly complemented the roasted pork and crispy rind well. After this one order, I was tempted to get another to go, but as with life and lunch, all things must be moderated.

In this diner’s place, I wonder when they’ll offer their own simple pork rind dish?

4 Blokes out of 5