More than meats the eye: Brick Light District's Salt and Board is a charcuterie showcase

Recent years have seen a proliferation of charcuterie and cheese boards on restaurant menus. Photogenic, eminently shareable and a showcase for artisanal charcuterie and cheeses, they are the perfect dish for these times.

In Albuquerque, you’ll find charcuterie and cheese boards everywhere from fine dining restaurants to gastropubs, but no place is more devoted to the form than Salt and Board in the University of New Mexico neighborhood. The boards that topline the menu there are thoughtful medleys of flavors and textures arranged in a way that calls to mind the palette of abstract expressionist.

Adam Moffett and Doug Crowder of Slice Parlor fame opened Salt and Board in 2018 on Harvard Street in an area known as the Brick Light District. Despite efforts by university and city officials, the neighborhood has languished for years in a kind of purgatory. Places move in and move out, storefronts remain vacant. Students and visitors tend to favor the scene a couple blocks east on Cornell Drive, where longtime favorites Frontier, Gyros Mediterranean and Saggio’s regularly draw crowds. It’s puzzling, as the Brick Light District’s wide, tree-lined sidewalks and strings of lights hanging over the street are charming and welcoming.

In keeping with the theme of the area, Salt and Board has a brick façade that looks like a continuation of the brick sidewalk in front of it. There’s a small patio adjacent to the entrance that was closed the Saturday night we were there.

More than meats the eye: Brick Light District's Salt and Board is a charcuterie showcase

The smallish dining room offers a choice of seating options. A padded banquette along one wall looked like the most comfortable place to sit. Otherwise, you’re left with counter and bar seating, a long picnic table with bench seating and a few tables spaced along the windows in front with metal chairs that discourage lingering. Sounds rocket off the hard surfaces. The clamor is exciting, if exhausting; I was relieved when a party of loud laughers relocated away from us shortly after sitting down.

The menu is broken up into four sections: charcuterie and cheese boards, pressed sandwiches, open-faced sandwiches and salads.

The small charcuterie board ($24) includes two meats and two cheeses, while the large board ($34) has three meats, three cheeses and marcona almonds. The meats and cheeses are chosen by the chef.

On this night, the choices for the small board were salami, capicola, Gouda and brie. The meats and cheeses were arranged around a generous pile of crostini in the middle of the board. It was well-balanced with salty, spicy and sweet tastes, and it was fun to try everything individually and then mix and match accordingly. I particularly enjoyed the blazing-hot capicola with brie and sweet fig jam. Other highlights: creamy bacon jam studded with little bits of bacon; mostarda, a fruit-based condiment of Italian inspiration that is sweet and spicy like a chutney; and Gouda freighted with tasty protein crystals. I found the small board plenty for two people to share.

Sandwiches cost between $12 and $17. The open-faced Chicken Pâté Sandwich ($15) was served in four pieces arranged on a board and colorfully topped with pickled veggies, Fresno chile and microgreens. The menu described it as “bánh mì style,” but without the sliced pork and ham commonly found in the Vietnamese sandwich, the pâté’s minerally taste registered strongly. The flatbread underneath was superb, though.

Sandwiches and boards can be made gluten-free for $2 extra except the Croque Monsieur and Croque Madame, both of which are served with béchamel sauce. The gluten-free pressed Italian Sandwich ($16) arrived sliced in half on a plate next to a cup of vinaigrette and a salad. The Swiss cheese insinuated itself around the thin slices of salty prosciutto, slightly spicy soppressata, a dry-cured salami, and ham for a gooey, appetizing bite. A spread of olive tapenade provided an intense shot of brine. We paid it the ultimate compliment by setting half aside to take home, and then changing our minds and finishing it before the takeout box arrived.

On the lighter side, the menu offers three salads. The Root Vegetable Salad ($15) was heaped diagonally across a rectangular board. Most of it was a pile of arugula tossed in a creamy horseradish vinaigrette that provided a bed for slices of roasted red and yellow beets, lumps of goat cheese and shaved fennel. The whole thing was dusted with roasted, crushed pumpkin seeds. A good salad, if a bit heavy on the arugula.

Both the open-faced and pressed sandwiches come with a small salad, so ordering a salad with them is redundant.

You can drink here fairly cheaply. Several of the wines come in under $10 a glass, and most of the bottles land in the $30 to $40 range. The selection of local beers cuts a wide swath through lagers, pilsners, sours and IPAs. Pints cost $6, half-pints, $3.50. I had a glass of Ex Novo Stout to steel myself for the chilly post-prandial walk. Nutty, with notes of molasses, it did the job.

Service was friendly and mostly attentive. The manager boomed out a “hello!” to everyone who entered. Initially, one woman worked the entire dining room, but reinforcements arrived later. The server knew most of the gluten-free information. She told us there were no desserts on offer, at least for that night.

Salt and Board is a charcuterie board showcase. With its shareable dishes and affordable drinks, it’s a great fit for the Brick Light District.