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Looking Back At The Delicious Dawn Of Meat & Bread — Five Years Ago This Week

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by Andrew Morrison | Five years ago this week, local industry veterans Joseph Sartor, Frankie Harrington, and Cord Jarvie opened a little sandwich shop on the eastern edge of Gastown. They named it Meat & Bread.

I don’t know if they knew it was going to be as popular as it instantly was (they’ve since opened locations in Coal Harbour, Victoria, and Seattle), but man have they ever turned it into a well oiled machine! Even at peak times when the line up stretches out the door and onto the Cambie St. sidewalk, they turn and burn like they were born for it. Truly, to watch the lunch rush unfold there is to behold a thing of mechanical beauty.

Great branding and interior design certainly helped them on their way (take a bow, Glasfurd & Walker and Craig Stanghetta), but the food has something to do with it, too. It turns out people like porchetta, a lot. And meatballs, and turducken, and jerk chicken…and those killer Beta 5 chocolate bars. Happy birthday, boys!

  • Exterior of Meat & Bread
  • Interior | Meat & Bread
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  • Interior | Meat & Bread
  • Pillar detail | Meat & Bread
  • Exterior of Meat & Bread
  • Meat & Bread (display counter)
  • Meat & Bread is coming soon
  • Meat & Bread (back wall - "eagles" sign soon to read "meat")
  • Gorgeous legs of the lengthy communal table...
  • Meat & Bread (display tiling)
  • Meat & Bread (steel menu board - bald eagles are market priced, naturally)
  • Meat & Bread (light fixtures)
  • Meat & Bread (branding)
  • Pillar detail | Meat & Bread
  • Meat & Bread (interior from rear)
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  • Joseph Sartor, Cord Jarvie, Frankie Harrington before the opening of Meat & Bread

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