6", Meaty Balls and a double entendre or two! (Subway)

Member Name: Emma1973

Product:	Subway
Date:	02/05/08 (343 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb service, huge range of fillings

Disadvantages: Restaurants are far too small

Springing up faster than the Tesco Express taking over your local Post Office where you can buy potatos with your postal orders, which is the fast growing and biggest fast food restaurant in the UK, and indeed the World?
Well, if this review happened to be in the Burger King section you wouldn't get a gold star, but as it's in the Subway one, then it must be Subway, so a gold star and a Huzzah!

Yes, it's true, the Golden Legged Whore has finally lost its grip despite accepting credit and debit cards, opening 24hrs, giving unlimited refills and trying to go healthy, it's on the slippery slope. At the moment Subway and McD's have around 1000 stores apiece, but Subway will overtake that by the middle of this year, and by 2010, aims to have 2010 restaurants in the UK.

So what makes Subway so different, and what's it actually doing to slap Ronald McDonald in second place? For me its not the décor, the toys given away with the kids meal, not even the special offers, my favourite places to eat are the transport cafes where they do the best breakfasts! Cholesterol watching is not a hobby of mine!

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So enough of the gumpf , surely it's the food that's the most important thing? And if you've ever been in a Subway, you'll know it's not so much a choosing of a sandwich as the construction of a small feast!
Oops, did I say sandwich? How ignorant of me, it is of course a 'Sub', as in a submarine roll which has now appeared in supermarkets all over the country. For the rest of us, it's a plain old long bread roll! But.........................

It's never as easy as that! The first thing you did is decide what size Sub you want, 6" or a foot long (by the way, according to the bbc website the UK leads the way in seeing innuendos in everything!) Easily enough apparently, but no, now you have to choose the type of bread. There is:

Italian (White) Bread
Wheat Bread
Parmesan Oregano Bread
Honey Oat
Hearty Italian Bread
Italian Herbs & Cheese

Personally, I always go for the ordinary Italian bread, or Herb and Cheese, I'm not a huge fan of wheat bread, I find the Hearty Italian a bit stodgy and personally, I've not seen the Parmesan Oregano bread yet. The bread is baked in store every morning, and if you're lucky enough to get there early you'll have it all nice and warm! Although it could be argued its not freshly baked as it's part-baked, delivered frozen and then finished off. They also never seem to have enough of anything over than the Italian bread, so get there late in the afternoon and you'll be restricted to that!

They've also started doing wraps, but its just not the same, and to be honest they don't put enough filling in them so you end up with mostly a mouth of stodgy wrap.


So you get your size, you've got the bread, what do you put in it? Well this is where it gets difficult! There's no just walking in here, picking one of the shelf, paying and leaving, nope its far more difficult! So you choose your basic filling:

Chicken & Bacon Ranch - Chicken breast strips, cheddar cheese, bacon
Italian BMTTM - Genoa salami, pepperoni, ham, cheese
Meatball Marinara - Hot meatballs in marinara sauce, cheese
Spicy Italian - Genoa salami, pepperoni
Subway MeltTM - Sliced turkey breast, ham, bacon, melted cheese
Steak & Cheese - Hot steak, onions and peppers, melted cheese
Tuna - Do I really have to explain this one?
Veggie PattyTM - I'm really not sure whats in this and haven't been able to find out either!

Personally I always go for the Steak and Cheese, although the onions and peppers are indistinguishable the steak is definalty very nice, and the Meatball Marinara is only to be attempted when you're not wearing your best clothes or out on a date! The sauce is very messy, drips everywhere and the meatballs are a little too large to bite into comfortably! But by gawd, its lovely!
Then (it's a long process this), you can choose the salad, lettuce, cucumber, sweetcorn, peppers, onion, pickles and olives, just choose one or all of them.
And you think you're done! But alas no! Now is the choice of dressings.
Salt and pepper, light mayonnaise, Chipotle Southwest dressing, Ranch dressing, Sweet Onion dressing, HP sauce, and Honey Mustard. Personally the Sweet Onion is fabulous, if only they sold bottles of the stuff!
You can also choose to have them toasted so the cheese goes all nice and melted!

But a word of warning, these options are not low fat, Steak and Cheese are your best bet at 336kc and 9.8g of fat per 6" serving up to 461kcal and 26.1g for the Spicy Italian!

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But aha!, you thought choosing the above was difficult to choose from? Well, there's another range of ingredients to choose from with less than 6grams of fat per 6" serving!
Beef
Chicken Breast
Ham*
Subway Club
Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki
Turkey Breast
Turkey Breast & Ham
Veggie DeliteTM
And the all but the Chicken Teriyaki are under 300kcal per serving, but watch the dressings, the Ranch one is 196kcal per squirt! Which, when you consider a cheese and onion sandwich from Tesco's can be nearly 500kcal is quite fabulous!
My daughter however assures me that the Chicken Teriyaki is by far the best of all the fillings!


But your ordeal is not yet over! When its all packaged and off to the till, you're asked whether you want to make it a meal which will usually bump the price up to between £4 and £5, you get to choose between a packet of crisp or a cookie, if you're watching the weight resist those lovely double chocolate, freshly baked, chewy cookies, it'll cost you 212 kcal, nearly as much as the sandwich! You can also get unlimited refills of fizzy drinks.


And I hate to say it but if you go in before 11am there's a whole different range to choose from, the Breakfast Sub, which I have personally never tried, nothing has managed to drag me away from my sausage patty and pancakes yet!
Bacon
Bacon & Egg (includes cheese)
Cheese & Egg
Mega Breakfast (includes cheese)
Sausage & Egg (includes cheese)
Sausage
All high in fat and quite frankly I would avoid like the plague!


Customer Service and Cleanliness

Absolutely second to none, they constantly wear and change clothes, the food prep counter is always spotlessly clean. The staff are always polite, helpful and very patient when you're dithering over what to have! And they have plenty of staff so the experience is quite quick and painless. The restaurant itself is always clean and tables cleared promptly.


Random facts and info

Because I could quite frankly be here all day writing!

* They've started opening Halal only franchises
* They have a 'sub of the day' where they feature one sub for only £1.99
* The 'Sub Club', buy 8 6"s, get the card stamped and get one free!
* The actual restaurants are very small, I've never been in one with more than 10 tables
* They do kids meals of a small bap or wrap, drink, snack and toy, although I've never actually seen one!
* Contrary to popular myth they haven't been taken over by McDonalds
* They are, in fact, about to take over the world!
* If you've managed to get this far I congratulate you and you can award yourself a nice full fat Sub with a lovely cookie!

Summary: Probably the best fast food restaurant in the world!