When talking about foods that soothe severe hunger pangs we mainly think of the trusty chicken soup, cordon bleu and pancake combination. It's not often that a sandwich is the go-to option when a fierce hunger strikes, but this theory seems to be changing. After our first visit to Meat & Sauce, where there are hearty sandwiches drenched in sauce, we can safely say that the difference between sandwiches and sandwiches can be as great as sleeping in our own bed and camping out in the wild for a week.
While we all have memories of not-that-amazing sandwiches filled with a chewy piece of meat, a limp lettuce leaf and a mushy slice of tomato Meat & Sauce shows exactly what a sandwich could and should be. In order to make a truly delicious sandwich, we have to visit the market for quality dairy products and vegetables, and go to a prestigious butcher for cold cuts.
The street food scene in Budapest deals mainly with the various traditional foods of different countries. We have a lot of Mexican, Far Eastern and American restaurants, but it is rare to find authentic sandwich makers. The four gentlemen behind Meat & Sauce had the same thought and with loads of catering experience and after working abroad they decided to open a sandwich shop in the heart of Budapest, which manages to be so much more.
We can find the manifestation of their dreams in Nagymező Street, just opposite our favourite pizza place. It's a bite-sized shop with a simple design, a standing area on the street, and a wall sink (more on this later). Nothing new so far. Any fashionable street food place could fit this description. We would not even shout “eureka!” after reading through the menu above the counter. However, when the guys started to talk about the flavours, their lengthy experimental work and the ingredients of their five original sandwiches we could not help but glance at our beef sandwich that was in the making and admire how the whole thing was getting bathed in a special sauce. After the unusual sight, we began to feel impatient for our sandwich, just like the children standing in line to IKEA’s playhouse, jealously watching the others playing and jumping around.
The five sandwiches, featuring pre-set flavour combinations prove to be an important part of what makes this place work. The compositions, ratios and seasoning have months of hard work behind them. In other words, it would be nearly impossible for us to build our own sandwich that is better than these. Naturally, everyone is free to experiment, but the abundance of options can easily become overwhelming as it can be at other “do-it-yourself” sandwich bars. We decided to just go with the original creations at Meat & Sauce.The beef sandwich (1590 Ft) arrived at our table on a wooden board and wrapped in paper, which proved to be rather helpful a few seconds later. This is the only sandwich that, even though it is stuffed with super-saucy sous vide beef and lemon mustard sauce, gets wholly dipped in the M&S sauce. It drips like a soaked sponge, yet the ciabatta is still crispy as we take our first bite. Now we know that here “sauce” refers to more than just the 15 kinds of dipping sauces.
The duckversion (1490 Ft) mixes duck leg confit with roast duck liver, pickled cucumbers and basil feta cream. This sandwich is more velvety, not as “macho” as the beef version. Assembling the pork sandwich (1590 Ft) was the boys’ most challenging task, because the mixture of pork confit and orange red curry lacked something else, a savoury flavour… then one of the idea masters thought of adding coriander. What a great choice! The fresh herb gives an extra spice to the already striking sandwich, which is so saucy – or rather, juicy – that we have to check our clothes after every bite to make sure we didn't end up wearing our lunch. And thus we come to the main reason why there is a sink in the shop.
Those who are a tad less excited about the meaty goods can choose from fresh, saucy salads (490-990 Ft) – although we can have some meat with these as well. We tried a fishcake that was a combination of cod, salmon and shrimp, too, in the form of a fish salad. In addition, there's also baked onion rings (390 Ft), rustic baked fries (390 Ft), daily cakes (490 Ft) and soups (490 Ft). For 1200 and 1500 Forints, we can buy a menu including half a sandwich, fries, cake and/or a soup.
Before complaining about the prices, and asking how a sandwich can cost 1600 Forints, let’s think about the “slightly” overpriced menus of well-known fast food restaurants, which are not even guaranteed to contain any real meat and fill us up for only half an hour. Here, we are guaranteed to get real meat, wrapped in great ciabatta, with creative sauces. However we would not recommend Meat & Sauce for first dates, as most women would cringe at the thought of eating something so saucy – and with such vigour – in front of a man. Even though that would be a pretty cool start of a relationship.
