Jamie's Christmas Cracker at Boots

Good fresh taste, nice sandwich all the way through. All the right ingredients but the overall taste isn't quite as good as the promise.

The half pork chipolata adds something special. The onion and sage stuffing was added directly to the bread in small bits instead of the sandwich which ended up being a bit over powering.

A additional weird and spicy taste was present but hard to identify, perhaps it was the bread sauce.

The cost was £3.90 a sandwich and it was not part of the excellent boots meal deal so ended up rather expensive in comparison to the other sandwich options.

The packaging was the same as the rest of the Jamie Oliver range with no Christmas twist except the name.

3 taste
5 ingredients
2 price
2 Christmas factor

Overall 12/20 good with some nice innovations but not the best of the bunch.

Upper Crust - Turkey Feast

This is a review of the Upper Crust - Turkey Feast
Location - Glasgow Central Station
Price - 4.39

I had high hopes for the Upper Crust. Walking past the stall in central station, all the baguettes look fresh and tasty. One festive inspired sandwich is on offer - The Turkey Feast. The sandwich has the usual ingredients; Turkey, Bacon, Stuffing and Cranberry and fresh crisp bread.

The price of 4.39 is not too bad considering the shop is based in a train station, where prices are usually high. Upper Crust, do not advertise this seasonal sandwich and no special promotions of packaging is offered, so the rating is really down to Price, Content and Taste.

I liked that the sandwich was not pre-packed and was instead made in-store. The sandwich tasted nice and fresh and used good quality ingredients. The bacon was slightly fatty for my liking but still tasted nice. The main criticism comes from the application of the cranberry sauce, it was all on one side of the sandwich - so you got a heavy hit of cranberry on every second bite. Another bad aspect was the mystery spicy sauce on part of the sandwich which really put me off. This must have been transfer from a sandwich made earlier. It really ruined the experience for me, otherwise would score a lot higher.

Taste - 2
Contents - 3
Price - 3
Christmas Factor - 2

Overall - 10 - This sandwich really could have scored higher if more care and attention was given when they were making it. Great fresh ingredients, good tasting - but mystery spicy sauce was present....

McDonalds Festive Menu

This is a review of the McDonalds Festive - Chicken Celebration Sandwich
Location - St Enoch Center Glasgow
Price - 3.99


A bit of an unusual review, led into McDonalds with the promise of a festive menu. The packaging of the product looks good, the posters advertise Christmas...

However the Chicken Celebration, is anything but festive. The ingredients are; chicken, lettuce, onion, cheese and "festive relish" (spicy sauce). But there are none of the usual Christmas ingredients. The sandwich itself tasted ok, with good quality chicken, however this is NOT a christmas sandwich/meal.

Taste - 2

Contents - 1

Price - 2

Christmas Factor - 1

Overall - 6 - An ok tasting meal, but this is just something off the normal menu with Christmas Packaging.

Burger King Christmas Angus

Advertised as a Christmas Sandwich the Marketing people at Burger King re really pushing the genre with the Christmas Angus plus. Very similar to a normal Angus except with extra crispy onions and a BBQ sauce. Bacon is used instead of turkey and no cranberry sauce to be seen.

On the advert the meal included cheese wrapped in breadcrumbs and dipping sauce instead of fries although when I ordered it seems you have to ask for them specifically so I didn't get them so they aren't included in the review.

I do like the Angus burger so I enjoyed eating it but the lack of Christmas sandwich ingredients and any feeling of Christmas definitely brings the meal down. The extra ingredients of the BBQ sauce and onions were good but didn't make it any better than a normal angus.

The packaging was a specially package for the burger but no hint of a Christmas tree or snowman so it could well have been designed to be used again in six months time.

The price was £6.99 for a medium meal which is pretty high even for Burger King. I coud go to a good gastro pub and get a burger for the same price.

Taste - 4
Contents - 2
Price - 1
Christmas factor - 1

Overall - 8/20 - Not a real Christmas sandwich

RS McColl/Urban Eat

RS McColl isn't a normal place Sandwich shop but as they stock the Urban Eat Turkey Feast Christmas sandwiches it is fair game for this blog. It took a while to find the sandwich as the Christmas packaging was subtle but after closer inspection their is definitely a Red Christmas tree hidden on the packaging. No mention of Christmas or the ingredients aside from Turkey but this was enough of a clue for eagle eyed me.

The ingredients are all pretty standard Turkey, onion and sage stuffing, cranberry and vegetable spread. Not much time or thought has gone into making this sandwich special. The taste is reflected by this, the sandwich isn't bad but doesn't have any positive stand out features. The bread felt a little stale, the turkey tasteless. The stuffing wasn't too over powering and the cranberry sauce was okay but not consistently spread across the whole sandwich.

The price was £2.99 for the Christmas Sandwich, this was a bit steep and even the shop assistant scanned it twice as she didn't believe it initially. No meal deal, no donation to charity.


After finishing i felt that empty guilty feeling like i had cheated on a real Christmas sandwich with a cheap replica. Won't be rushing back to RS McColls at lunchtime any time soon.

1 - Taste
2 - Ingredients
2 - Christmas
1 -  Price

Overall

7/20 - unimaginative sandwich 

Boots Shapers

This is a review of the Boots Shapers -  Turkey, Stuffing and Cranberry Sandwich

Location - St Enoch Center, Glasgow

The Shapers brand is Boots version of a healthy eating range. The sandwich is billed as 345 calories, so I thought it would make an interesting review to see how it compares with the full fat sandwiches. Boots make a great effort with the marketing of Christmas, but this sandwich packaging was a bit dull for boots.

The best thing about the Sandwich - it is part of the meal deal. If you combine this with a Smoothie (1.60) and Brownie (1.10), Boots will only charge you 59p for the sandwich - 3.29 total.

At 59p in the meal deal, I would say the sandwich is almost value for money. I cannot complain about the main contents - Turkey (tasty), Cranberry (nice and sweet), Stuffing (ok - not really enough to taste), Spinach (green). But the bread they wrapped it in - horrible - it was cardboard and the seeds within the bread were very bitter. My suggestion to save calories further - lose the bread - eat the contents.

Taste - 0.5

Contents - 2

Price - 4

Christmas Factor - 2

Overall - 8.5 - The Chocolate brownie in the meal deal was good. Sandwich - rubbish. 

Philpotts

This is a review of the Philpotts - Big Christmas Sandwich
Location - Bothwell Street, Glasgow

Philpotts is rare sight on the high street, with only 2 shops in Scotland. It caters for the premium end of the market, so I was expecting PRET/EAT prices. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the price of the Christmas sandwich, at only 3.40.

The Sandwich is made to order, but in keeping with the spirit of this Blog, I did not exclude any ingredients. The sandwich includes - turkey, stuffing, cranberry, roast veg (parsnip, carrot, onion) and Cumberland Sausage. The ingredients were fresh and tasty and worked well together. I was disappointed with the turkey - it was sliced and was very similar to the sliced turkey you would get in the supermarket. There is no real Christmassy experience in store or in the marketing of the product, it really is just about the taste here.

Taste - 4
Contents - 5
Price - 3
Christmas Factor - 1

Overall - 13 - Great sandwich! The first sandwich to have roast veg and sausage in it, so far. Let down by the lack of taste in the sliced turkey.