It’s Monday and it’s time for match 3. Did you miss the World Cup of Christmas sandwiches over the weekend? Of course you did! But I can’t do this every day, I need a break.
Today it’s a battle of the hot sandwiches! The Festive Turkey Stack by Subway vs The Festive Toastie by the Rye Cafe.
But before we get down to business, I found something out in the Rye Cafe – there’s another local Christmas sandwich reviewer! Yes, someone else has been doing my schtick in this village long before I moved here this year. Will we become mortal enemies or rivals that turn into keen allies, taking on the whole world together? Only time will tell. Now, let’s get down to business.
The Rye Cafe is my local cafe and home of the ploughman’s sandwich I dusted off the blog for in February. It’s their first year on the blog and they are off to a good start, so today we are saying goodbye to:
REVIEW: Festive Turkey Substack by Subway
Base ingredients: sliced turkey breast, maple smoked streaky bacon, crispy hash browns.
I added: crispy onions, spinach, American-style cheese, lite mayonnaise on 9-grain wheat bread
There was confusion last year over wether the Turkey Substack was a Christmas sandwich or not, but this year they’ve thrown the word Festive in front of it to avoid any doubt. I like it when global multinational companies respond to the whims of my blog.
I felt so bad getting Subway delivered two years ago that I couldn’t do it again, but I did use the app to order ahead so I could nip into Leatherhead and just pick it up. I also got caught up in the Christmas specials in the app and ordered some dipping gravy, pigs in blankets and a sticky toffee pudding cookie. A big lunch!
Of course, once I got to Subway, they hadn’t seen my order and I had to wait whilst they built it anyway just like if I had walked in like a normal person. As I was waiting, I got to see them microwave those pigs in blankets. Mmmm…mmm. Eventually my order was ready and put into a sealed paper bag. My brain said “Open the bag and check everything” but my British politeness said “Right in front of them? Don’t be so rude”. My brain was correct – they’d forgotten my sticky toffee pudding cookie! A great experience ordering through the app all round.
As you can see from the ingredients above, I added mayonnaise, crispy onions and spinach to try to get the sandwich more like a standard Turkey Feast sandwich and I have to say that the sandwich was quite good, I really liked the hash browns and those crispy onions had some strong flavour! I know I’ve moaned about this before, but it really needs cranberry sauce for a little sweet hit and I know they used to do that in Subway, it was an option with the other sauces around Christmas time. The campaign to bring cranberry sauce back for next year starts here. Once we get that we can work on getting stuffing.
One innovation I did enjoy was the dipping gravy. Yes, on a weekday lunchtime I was dipping a footling sandwich into gravy and eating it with a little bowl of pigs in blankets. I felt like Henry VIII and will presumably get around the same size soon. The dipping gravy wasn’t exactly good gravy but I’d thoroughly recommend dipping your sandwich in gravy. Not just Subway, all sandwiches. The downside of the gravy was that combined with the potato from the hash browns meant it was beginning to taste more like a roast dinner sandwich and not a Christmas one. If only it had some cranberry sauce or stuffing in it!
So overall, no real complaints and if you like Subway I’d say go for this sandwich even if it isn’t that Christmassy. But we say goodbye to Subway today because, despite a solid gravy covered effort, it wasn’t as good as the Rye Cafe who are through to the quarter finals to face either M&S or Sainsbury’s.
Before we go, let’s have a look at the World Cup predictions league.
Carly not only correctly predicted that South Korea, Senegal and Poland would make it out of the group stages, she also predicted where they would finish in their groups and flew to the top of the table! Murray and myself have fallen from the top spots because other people also did well in the groups, but there hasn’t been too much change since then as the first four round of 16 games have gone pretty much as anyone would expect. Maybe the other games will throw up a few more surprises and mix the league up a bit. The good news is it looks like I won’t be winning my own trophy!
See you tomorrow for M&S v Sainsbury’s.
Christmas Sandwich Reviews 