Please note, The Joint Marylebone is now closed. Time Out Food editors, MARCH 2020.
This Marylebone branch of a popular Brixton barbecue place is popular with local residents and office workers. You won’t sit in mega-comfort on the wooden benches, but you will have a view of a well-done-up room, dominated by a huge wall painting of a pheasant.
The menu is short: a handful of sandwiches, ribs and sides. Our food was a mixed bag, with the meat in two sandwiches (chicken and pulled pork, both £8.50) tending towards dryness. And the slaw with the pork sandwich was way too sweet. Our best dish, a short rib ‘burger’ (£9.50), came with a rich bacon relish.
Side dishes, all at £4.50, were also a mixed bag – literally, as some are served tied up in paper. Tasty onion rings had survived the bag’s humidity better than the fries, which were well made but losing heat and starting to wilt. A mixed salad was of better-than-average quality; like the other sides, it could have been portioned a little more generously. The kitchen clearly knows what it’s doing, and could easily correct these minor flaws.
Beer is the natural partner for this food, but there’s also wine and cocktails. Service is charming and enthusiastic. And you can walk away replete on less than £25 a head. The Joint has given meat-minded Marylebonistas something worth sinking their teeth into.