Earl Canteen

I check out Urbanspoon frequently for public opinion regarding eateries around town.  It's also a good resource for finding places that you would not know about otherwise.  Over the past few months, one of the eateries which has featured highly on the 'Talk of the Town' list is Earl Canteen.

You can classify it a lunch time sandwich bar, serving not-your-everyday type of sandwiches, made to order on the spot.  I wanted to know what the fuss was about so Tina and I had lunchies there today while basking in the glorious sun.

We both settled on the Pork Belly baguette.  At $13.50, this certainly is not cheap.

The description goes: Crisp skin Otway pork belly, apple, cabbage and fennel coleslaw and wilted silverbeet on a baguette.

Earl prides itself on it's produce and yes the pork belly was sublime.  The pork crackling was cooked to the point of candied and this was certainly a nice fresh chunk of oink oink belly.  It was a bit difficult to eat everything in one bite, so here's me enjoying the candied crackling.

My criticisms.  The baguette portion wasn't long enough.  While I don't doubt it's freshness, the baguette outer crust was a bit too hard.  It was difficult to chew and there was no way you could squish the baguette down and take a big bite.  This was also made worse by the baguette being cut open along it's short axis rather than it's long axis.  While this might have made the presentation of the pork belly nicer and gave the impression of very large baguette, it just was too difficult to 'eat it like a sandwich'.  I ended up having to bite sections of the bread off, chew and then bite into the pork and salad.  In other words, it was bit annoying to eat it.

Ok.  I am whining about how to eat a baguette.

For $13.50 I would have expected to be quite full.  I was content for sure, but I definitely had room for a crepe.  Too bad Le Triskel was shut.  We had cake instead!

So....Earl Canteen.  It certainly has it's fans and yes the ingredients were great and after years of living the UK and eating sandwiches ad nauseam, it sure would have been nice to have an Earl in London.  But that baguette really put me off and if I was to eat the pork belly baguette again, I would ask to substitute it for another piece of bread.  Overall, I was a tad bit underwhelmed by Earl.  However, I definitely do want to return and sample their other offerings before deciding it's worthiness!