The football World Cup and our predictions league may be over, but the World Cup of Christmas Sandwiches still burns.
In today’s second semi-final, fighting it out for a place in thr final against the Rye Cafe are: Turkey, Stuffing & Bacon by Waitrose and Jamie’s Christmas Turkey Feast by Jamie Oliver (form the Shell garage).
Waitrose have beaten a poor effort by Pret and the solid benchmark of Christmas sandwiches, Tesco, to make it this far. Jamie Oliver has easily beaten Poundland and then saw off a pretty decent sandwich from Morrisons to get into the semi finals in his first appearance on the blog. But only one can make it through, and that one is Jamie Oliver, so we are saying goodbye to:
REVIEW: Turkey, Stuffing and Bacon by Waitrose
Turkey breast, pork and chestnut stuffing, turkey stock mayonnaise, cranberry and recurrent chutney and smoked bacon in sliced malted bread
Finalists Rye Cafe and Jamie Oliver are new to the blog, so we get to do this just one more time this year. Ready? Is this sandwich the same as last year? Yes, exactly the same! But last year, confusingly, had one very dry triangle of bread (out of 4 triangles which must not have been from the same slices!) and the turkey was also pretty dry. So this year I’ve left it to soak for 10 minutes before eating. Of course I haven’t, I’m not mental.
Well the good news is, it isn’t as dry as last year BUT it is still kind of dry. Without wanting to give away the magic of the blog, I did buy this sandwich, keep it in the fridge and eat it 1 day past its sell by date (a date you don’t need to look at in the photo if you believe I am eating two Christmas sandwiches every weekday lunchtime in December up until this point as part of this World Cup format), so the dryness could be on me.
Dryness aside, it’s a tasty sandwich. The chutney, stuffing and bacon go together very well and this year the chunks of turkey are moist. It is nothing spectacular, but nothing ever is, especially as I went back to basics with turkey sandwiches this year. Instead, it is yet another solid sandwich, solid enough to see off solid old Tesco in fact, the ultimate solid benchmark of Christmas sandwiches. And solid enough to see itself in the third place playoff, although it did get a slightly easier draw than the other side of the schedule. Would it have beaten Boots, Lidl, Sainsbury’s or the Rye Cafe? Unlikely. If anything, it has over-performed, so congratulations to Waitrose, the Morocco of the World Cup of Christmas sandwiches. And congratulations to Jamie bloody Oliver, who has made it to the final.
Come back tomorrow for a fairly pointless third place play-off and then see you on Thursday for the final!
Christmas Sandwich Reviews 