It's not just food, it's disappointing overpriced food! (Marks & Spencer Large Meat Platter)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Marks & Spencer Large Meat Platter
Date:	27/04/09 (221 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Delicious silverside beef, all meats beautifully cooked

Disadvantages: Not well presented at all, pretty bog standard cooked meats, very expensive for what it is

Part of my order from Marks & Spencer for my Easter party was a platter of cold meats, at £20 for 25 slices which I know is expensive but from previous experience M&S do excellent meat products so I was looking forward to a real treat for the meat eaters amongst us.

What I received was a real disappointment. The three meats provided were nice enough, in particular the roast beef silverside was excellent, but there was nothing I couldn't have bought from the deli at Sainsbury's for a fraction of the price.

The first thing that annoyed me was that I didn't receive a beautifully arranged platter as advertised on the website (the photo above) but a stack of meat and a cheap looking plastic serving tray. I couldn't manage to arrange them quite as smartly as the photographer but they still looked very nice indeed, although not really twenty quids worth of nice!

For your money you get nine slices of roast beef silverside and eight slices each of breaded gammon and outdoor bred Wiltshire gammon. I sampled a slice of each meat and all were beautifully cooked and absolutely delicious, but as I said earlier I feel I could have gone for the more premium priced items from the deli and had much the same eating experience.

The silverside was delicious, the slice I had on my plate melted in my mouth and was cooked to perfection. The gammons both tasted the same if I'm honest, the breaded variety was sliced a little thicker and therefore had a slightly meatier taste but really there wasn't a lot of difference between the two. The breading was nice though, not greasy in the slightest and added a delicate flavour of its own to the meat. I personally thought the Wiltshire gammon was a little fatty tasting but this wasn't a terribly bad thing as it was still very nice indeed.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the meat although it wasn't so exceptional that anyone commented on it, my granddaughters' both ate a little gammon but really there wasn't anything special about any of the meats at all.

To sum it up I think I could say that these are tasty meats but not worth the price tag in my opinion, the only meat worthy of being called special was the silverside but then I didn't really need to spend such a large amount of money to get good quality cooked beef.

Summary: Tasty enough but I could have bought the same quality much cheaper from any of the supermarket delis