Pret A Manger Posh Cheddar & Pickle Baguette

After stumbling upon yet another Pret A Manger outlet, I decided it was time to sample the baguette that was ranked Pret's best 'sandwich' by no less an organ than Time Out magazine. Could the Posh Cheddar & Pickle baguette possibly live up to this grand bestowal? Let's find out...


First Impressions

It doesn't look overly inspiring as it sits in it's plastic wrapper.  Some cress and sun-dried tomato peer out invitingly, but overall it doesn't look like there is too much to get excited about. Maybe a closer look inside will get me a bit more excited.

Detailed Inspection

Upon opening the baguette it looks as if this has been made in a hurry, or by someone right handed, as most of the filling is stacked towards the right hand side.

The two slices of cheese stretch across the whole baguette, but the red onion (what there is of it) is almost all up one end. The mayo is sparingly applied to the baguette, but the 3 bits of sun-dried tomato are slightly more evenly applied. So it comes as no surprise that there is virtually a whole mouthful of baguette at one end that only has Cheese and none of the other fillings. I didn't lift up the cheese to see how the pickle was spread for fear of yet more disappointment!


Taste

This is a very tasty baguette - when you happen to get a mouthful of all the ingredients that is. Due to the uneven spreading of the ingredients you can get either a lovely mouthful of tangy pickle and sun-dried tomato or just plain old cheese. The baguette itself is also very tasty - they used to advertise this as an 'artisan' baguette, but don't anymore. It still tastes the same but has a less pretentious ring to it. But it's certainly tastier than a plain old white baguette.


Verdict

This is a good baguette alright, but spoiled somewhat by the clumsy assembling of the fillings. If the fillings were evenly spread out (hopefully the law of averages would determine you would get one of these at some point) then you can see why Time Out would like it so much. Maybe I was a bit unlucky on the day and the many other Pret branches make a better job of putting this one together.

So based purely on taste I will give it 4/5 - however they need to up their baguette assembly procedures somewhat.

Pret A Manger Classic Super Club sandwich

There is an infamous urban myth that says you are never more than 20 feet from a Rat in the United Kingdom. The same can almost be said of a Pret sandwich, as the Pret A Manger chain of sandwich shops in the City of London appear on almost every other street. Indeed, there are 5 Pret outlets within 0.3 miles of my workplace, according to Google Maps! They are probably the most popular chain in the city, with the Pret Sandwich or some other comestible bearing the Pret logo being a very common site on office desks.

So I picked the nearest branch and off I went to sample the Pret Classic Super Club sandwich.


First Impressions

Pret sandwiches are packed in a uniform, utilitarian style box, with no labelling to differentiate between them, so they're as plain as you can get. The corporate identity is paramount.

On the sandwich front, the filling appears to be almost bursting out of the front of the sandwich, promising a feast of Chicken, Bacon & Tomato, with copious amounts of salad leaves. Lets take a closer look.


Detailed Inspection

When opening the sandwich, it's plain to see that a lot of the filling is salad leaves. So much so, that at first you can't see the rest of the ingredients. However, after sweeping the leaves into the bin (more on that in a minute), the rest of the filling becomes clear.

The filling with with salad leaves removed

There are a couple of sizeable slices of Tomato, however the chicken and bacon appear a bit thin on the ground bread. There appears to be a fair amount of bread with no chicken or bacon covering it. As is so often the case, the top slice of bread has no butter or mayo applied.


Taste

This is actually quite a good tasting sandwich. The mix of chicken & mayonnaise seems about right, with the bacon adding a slight smoked flavour. The bacon could benefit from being a bit crispier, having a slight rubbery quality to it., however that's tricky to achieve with cold bacon. The Tomato adds the right amount of moistness/freshness into the mix.

The bread seems fresher than some of the other sandwiches reviewed so far, (perhaps benefiting from the Pret policy of making the sandwiches in store every day) so has a softer texture than other efforts.


Verdict

This is probably the best sandwich I have reviewed so far, with regards to quality of ingredients and taste. However, that should be expected considering the price premium over bog standard Tesco efforts. But at the price level it's sold for, they could make a bit more effort to ensure the chicken/mayo mix covers more of the bread. But other than that there is a lot to like.

Oh, and if you're wondering why I emptied the salad leaves into the bin, I can't eat them or any other 'raw' leaves (rocket, spinach etc.). So it is more than annoying going into Pret and finding virtually all of their sandwiches filled with either salad leaves, rocket or spinach!

But that annoyance aside, I give this 4/5.