Hello! December has flown by and it’s Christmas Eve already.

Despite making a vow to my ancestors that I was stopping the Christmas Sandwich Review Blog read around the world by about 5 people, I decided to jot a few notes down when eating Christmas sandwiches and give you lovely people a little round up. And it will be little. Why have I done this? Maybe the lack of pressure from not feeling like I have to search out sandwiches and write about what I eat has inspired me. Who knows? And, more importantly, who cares?

So here is a short round up of what I have eaten recently. Just like the piss take blog I started in 2012 was meant to be.

REVIEW: Turkey & Trimmings by Tesco

Turkey breast, mayonnaise, sausage, cranberry sauce, sage and onion stuffing and smoked bacon in malted bread.

The standard benchmark for any Christmas sandwich review year. Are the ingredients still the same as every year? Yes and no. Yes, because they are. No, because they put them in a different order to the last time I reviewed this in 2023. Also, then it was a Cumberland pork and lentil sausage, not just sausage. But before that in 2022, it was also just called sausage, downgraded from 2021 when it was called pork sausage, which I speculated in my 2022 review was because it was more lentil than meat. So why did they acknowledge the lentils in 2023? And not in 2025? I think after 13 years of this blog, I could write a doctorate on the Tesco Christmas sandwich.

And I’m afraid that generic, downgraded sausage has caused an issue this year – it was very dry and chewy. Everything else was good – a big hit of sage from the stuffing, a nice amount of sweet cranberry sauce cutting through all of the savoury, and some really smoky bacon. But that dry, chewy sausage was right in the middle of all of it, spoiling it for everyone else and, more importantly, making the Tesco sandwich that I consider the perfectly adequate sandwich to judge all other Christmas sandwiches by a bad sandwich. Can we not rely on anything anymore? Kier Starmer has ruined this country. And my blog!

REVIEW: Ultimate Festive Feast by Subway

Rotisserie-Style Chicken, Maple Cured Streaky Bacon, American-Style Cheese, Lettuce, Cranberry Sauce in Stuffing Topped Bread

How do you make “rotisserie-style” chicken? Presumably not on a rotisserie. And if your cheese is “American-style” but not American, you can just call it cheese. Also, the stuffing topped bread wasn’t ready when I went in a 11.45, so I had the cheese topped bread instead. Finally, not mentioned in the official ingredients (for some reason) is what I would call “stuffing-style paste” they dolloped in the sandwich using an ice cream scoop and then spread with a palette knife.

Sounds gross, right?

I really enjoyed this. That stuffing-style paste had a nice stuffing flavour. I couldn’t actually see the cranberry sauce in this sandwich in amongst everything else, but it had just the right amount of sweetness to offset that everything else. And the combination of chicken, bacon, cheese and lettuce all tasted great. Are those ingredients Christmassy? Probably not. Looking in the Subway rewards app, I hadn’t had a Subway since May, so maybe I was just excited to get a footlong down my throat after so long, but I had a good time and that’s the main thing. It was also nice to have a warm sandwich, rather than one out of the fridge. Speaking of non-traditional hot sandwiches…

REVIEW: Kris Kringles Katsu by Picky Bits

Crispy katsu chicken breast coated in a ritz cracker crumb, a golden katsu curry sauce, cranberry and clementine jam, iceberg lettuce in a curried mayo and a hot maple pig in blanket on a toasted brioche bun.

With the Rye Cafe closing this year 😢, we have lost one amazing local hot sandwich, so it’s up to Picky Bits to be the local legend that is the highlight of the blog going forwards. And look at that madness they have provided – Christmas and katsu together at last.

The chicken was perfectly cooked, crunchy to bite into and nice and moist on the inside. The chopped lettuce in mayo and the sauces were packed with flavour, and overall this was very, very good.

Just tucked under the sandwich in the right of that photo is a pig in blanket that’s got covered in katsu sauce. It was lovely. Did I ever tell you about the time I walked back into the office with a scotch egg katsu curry? One of my colleagues said it was the most Gimpson office lunch they’d ever seen. He knew me very well.

Back to this katsu. Was it really Christmassy? Was it more of a burger than a sandwich? None of this matters, it was brilliant. I don’t usually get a hot sandwich from Picky Bits because it’s about a 20 minute drive away from mine and I wasn’t sure how well a hot sandwich would travel, but I’m glad I did and I’ll be doing it again because I have definitely been missing out.

My original intention was to get the more traditional Christmas sandwich from Picky Bits, but when I saw this katsu madness, I knew I had to try it. Then I figured it is Christmas, and I am a fat fucker, so I got the other sandwich anyway.

REVIEW: The Ultimate Christmas Sandwich by Picky Bits

Free range rosemary roasted turkey and a classic sausage from Ben’s Butchery, smokey bacon mayo, sage and onion stuffing, crispy onions, cranberry and clementine jam, and a sprout and maple pecan slaw with rocket leaf on soft white sandwich loaf from Craddocks Bakery.

If you’re local to me, you know that the butcher and the baker mentioned in the ingredients are great. Craddock’s do cracking sandwiches of their own.

Both Picky Bits and Subway are claiming to have the ultimate Christmas sandwich/festive feast. Ultimate refers to something that is the last in a series, the most extreme or important, or the best of its kind. So it is impossible to have two ultimate sandwiches – there can be only one. And it’s Picky Bits, of course. The Subway sandwich had a paste in it!

This sandwich was absolutely loaded with good quality ingredients (no paste) and I thoroughly enjoyed taking a huge mouthful by biting down through all of the different layers and textures. There was a nice crunch from the crispy onions and a great savoury taste from the very nice sausage and the bacon mayo. Cutting through this was a nice level of sweetness from the jam and the sprout slaw. This really was everything I want from a Christmas sandwich and, after having to drive through Epsom twice, totally worth the around an hour it took me to get there, pick up the sandwiches and get back.

Right, that’s your lot for this year unless something special happens over Christmas, sandwich wise. Or someone invents some sort of Christmas sandwich review AI to take over the blog for me.

Have a good one.