A good sandwich is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
The interplay of contrasting textures, flavours, and temperatures all stuffed inside top-drawer bread make it the perfect handheld meal.
However, just because a sandwich looks the business doesn’t mean it tastes the business.
So many 'Grammable sandwiches cram in far too much filling, throwing the ratio of bread to filling out whack. And don’t get me started on buns and loaves that haven’t been engineered properly to contain their filling.
Oriel’s Modern Meat in Pontcanna, a sandwich shop, pie purveyor, roast dinner rustler and meatmonger, certainly know what they’re doing when it comes to making a tasty sandwich.
Owned by the same team as the excellent Oriel Jones butcher in Canton and run by the friendly Helen, they opened their doors on the former site of Cegin Oriel earlier this year.
Mainstays on their menu include breakfast buns, carvery subs, ginormous sausage rolls, and a selection of cook at home meat and condiments.
Out of the four sandwiches I’ve tried, Oriel’s Marry Me chicken focaccia, which is based is based on the viral TikTok dish of the same name, came out on top. When it was taken off the menu briefly during the summer there was a public outcry, and it was the first dish to sell out at their recent Sticky Fingers kitchen takeover. I can see why - it’s an addictive melange of naughtiness.
Crisp crumbed chicken pieces were bathed in a proposal-inducing combination of cream, garlic, chilli, sun blush tomato and parmesan. Topped with even more parmesan and a few leaves of spinach, it was all crammed into a soft and squidgy focaccia. On the side was a well-sized pile of impeccably crisp and well salted fries. For a tenner you get a hell of a lot of bang for your buck.
A hella good breakfast bun (£8.50, served until 12pm) was a close second in the rankings. A sturdy yet soft crumbed challah roll was filled with a slab of 24 hour bacon, which was essentially ridiculously tender slow-cooked pork belly, a runny-yolked fried egg and an ooze of American cheese. A good squeeze of brown sauce provided vital cut through.
The final filling, a golden wedge of hash brown, was impeccably crisp with a soft textured interior. I removed it from the bun as otherwise there's no way I would have been able to get the sandwich into my gob.
Oriel’s sausage rolls (£5) are always a banker too. A monster of chorizo sausage roll was all meat killer and no breadcrumb filler. Encased in golden, flaky pastry, at the bottom of the well-seasoned sausage meat sat nuggets of paprika-spiced chorizo.
A spicy BBQ chicken melt (£8.50) was a corker of a special over the summer. A soft toasted sub was overflowing with tender chicken in a sweet and savoury BBQ sauce and topped with molten spicy cheddar. Once again, a handful of Spinach leaves gave the merest illusion of healthiness.
I also enjoyed guzzling their steak sandwich (£10), another menu mainstay, in the sunshine of Pontcanna Fields.
More of that house-made soft crumbed focaccia was stuffed with well-flavoured steak slices and crisp salty fries dressed with creamy peppercorn sauce. A few of the steak slices were a touch chewy in places and so perhaps would have benefited from being cut slightly smaller and I would have loved some more of that peppercorn sauce to dunk my chips in.
Oriel’s Modern Meat Shop serves just the kind of comfort food that I crave on a weekly basis. Fortunately, it’s a ten-minute walk from my work so I’m going to work my way through everything on their menu… or I might just order their Marry Me chicken sandwich on repeat.
Address - Oriel's Modern Meat 221 Cathedral Road, Pontcanna, Cardiff CF11 9PP
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