Meat & Bread

Meat & Bread opened its first location in Vancouver's Gastown neighborhood in 2010, founded by Cord Jarvie and Frankie Harrington. The two had met in 2000 while working together at a restaurant called Eden in Dublin, Ireland, where they regularly ate at a nearby spot called Gruel that served hand-carved roast-meat sandwiches; that memory became the basis for the Vancouver shop a decade later. Jarvie and Harrington brought in chef Joseph Sartor to develop the menu, and the porchetta sandwich — pork shoulder roasted whole and hand-sliced to order at the counter, served with crackling and salsa verde — became the shop's signature order and the reason for its reputation.

The concept expanded to a second Vancouver location about 18 months after opening, and has since grown to four shops in Vancouver plus outposts in Calgary and, since 2022, Austin, Texas — its first U.S. location. The business now operates under the Abbotsford-based Fox & Crane Restaurant Group. The format has stayed narrow by design: a short, sandwich-driven counter-service menu built around one or two hero items rather than a broad restaurant menu.