With the Christmas period very much upon us, today we decided to pit two of Britain's top supermarkets' festive meal deals against each other - Tesco vs Marks & Spencer.
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00:00My name's Jack Marshall, I'm a digital reporter with the Metro team and I'm here today to
00:09talk to you about festive meal deals. Now we all love a meal deal, it's taken the UK
00:13by storm, loads of people rely on meal deals when it comes to grabbing a quick lunch on
00:16the go so we thought what better way to celebrate the start of the festive period than by doing
00:21a bit of a review of two of the more popular meal deals going, doing a bit of a comparison
00:25seeing how they stack up. So the two we'll be comparing today are Tesco's meal deal and
00:29M&S's meal deal. So yeah, let's start with the Tesco one. Picked up the Tesco one obviously
00:33for the club car price of £3.60 which is, yeah, pretty solid. It's a solid amount of
00:38money to pay for your lunch on a pretty regular basis. I got a sandwich with that which had
00:42chicken, stuffing, cranberry, bit of bacon in there as well. It had a snack, a pigs in
00:48blanket, sausage rolls and then a drink as well. There were no Christmassy drinks so
00:52I just grabbed the Pepsi Max. I obviously won't be reviewing that because there's nothing
00:55particularly Christmassy about it. But starting with the sandwich, overall it was good. Nice
01:00stuffing flavour coming through which you kind of expect. That's kind of a pretty powerful
01:04flavour when you've got the onions and that kind of thing. That was a good flavour profile
01:08coming through. The chicken was nice as well. There was lots of it on the sandwich. They
01:11didn't scrimp and just do bits in the middle and then the outer edges are just all dried
01:16crust. There was plenty of the chicken on there which was nice. Bit of a hit of saltiness
01:21from the bacon, bit of sweetness from the cranberry sauce as well. There was a nice
01:24balance to this sandwich. I liked it. It was good. It was plenty filling without really
01:29blowing my socks off. It was a meal deal sandwich. Yeah, solid. 3.5 out of 5. Not much to write
01:35home about. Not much to complain about. Not much to absolutely, you know, blow your mind
01:39either. As for the pigs in blanket sausage rolls, they were okay. They were a little
01:44bit dry and after having a sandwich which is kind of dominated by those kind of savoury
01:49flavours with a bit of a sweetness in there, this was quite samey. So you kind of want
01:54something a little bit different. If you're going to have this for your lunch, you want
01:56a bit of variation in terms of texture, flavour profiles. That's probably where lots of people
02:00would plump for like the crisps or something like that. But in the spirit of festive exploration,
02:05I thought let's have a bash. Yeah, it didn't blow me away. Definitely tastes like pigs
02:11in blankets. So you couldn't say that they kind of fell down on that front, but overall
02:15didn't really blow my socks off. I'm giving those a 3 out of 5. It can be generous. Yeah,
02:22solid. As for M&S, now M&S a bit more bougie, a bit more high priced. So yeah, the sandwich
02:29was very kind of like highfalutin, all bells and whistles. It was advertised as having 12
02:34different layers and there were three pieces of bread and there was a creamy gravy mayo,
02:39cranberry. There was, you know, like pickled purple cabbage on there. There was obviously
02:43the bacon, there was chicken. There was a lot going on. It was nice. It was nice. And yeah,
02:50there was nice touches to it. Like I say, I liked the red cabbage on there. That was nice.
02:56I like things like the bread had obviously been slightly toasted. So that added a little more to
03:01it without it being like really crispy and crunchy like, you know, toast, but it had a little hint
03:06to it. That was good. The one thing I'd kind of say they fell down on was they had like a layer
03:11of spinach and that was kind of a bit overwhelming and it just kind of started coming out in clumps
03:16with some bites. And I mean, just spinach and a load of bread isn't like the best flavour profile
03:22ever. You wanted the depth of like the chicken and the cranberry and the bacon and stuff like that.
03:26So I ended up picking bits of that off. Not really very appealing. Yeah, that's my one
03:31complaint from this, but overall I thought it was really good. It was nice. The chicken was juicy.
03:36I didn't notice the bacon too much, but every now and again, when you got it, there was that hint
03:39of saltiness with it. That was good. Yeah. Four out of five. Pretty solid. Now with the snack at M&S,
03:46you could get the one and only Corn on the Caterpillar. Now we're not talking the big Corn on the
03:50Caterpillar, we're talking a little mini one, just a little bite sized one for after you finish your lunch.
03:54And that was a five out of five. You cannot go wrong with a Corn on the Caterpillar. It was really
03:58tasty. Really nice to have a sweet snack. Completely different to the sandwich itself,
04:02unlike the Tesco where it was quite samey and it just had lovely detailing on it. It just, it was
04:07Corn on the Caterpillar. You can't go wrong. It was, it was a hit. Absolutely perfect. Brilliant. Now M&S
04:12did also offer a festive drink, which was a creamy gingerbread milkshake. Now I was a bit cynical
04:18about this. I wasn't sure how it was going to go down, but my first few drinks, my first few sips,
04:22I thought this is quite nice. It definitely had a ginger kick to it. I liked it in the moment.
04:26The more I was drinking it, I was like, it's a bit sickly. This, it was getting a bit too much.
04:30It's a very distinct flavour. Very, not overwhelming, but like you knew what you was drinking,
04:34what you were drinking. So that kind of got old quite quickly. And I don't know if I'd be keen to
04:39go back for more. Like when I finished it, I was like, no, it's fine. I'm finished. It wasn't like
04:43one of those drinks, it was like, order me another one. So yeah, I don't know. It was, because it was
04:48so distinctive, because it was so unique in its flavour profile, it was okay, but it was probably
04:55a bit too much, given how sweet and sickly it was. So yeah, not mad for that. Value for money,
05:01£8 for the M&S one. So I mean, that's a, that's a serious fork out for your lunch. With the Tesco
05:07one being £3.60, I'm giving it like a four out of five for value for money, because that's a lunch
05:12for, for not very much money at all. This being £8 is a one out of five for me. That's a lot of
05:17money to splash out on your lunch. That's not the kind of thing which you could probably afford to
05:20do day in, day out. So yeah, I'm not really impressed on that front from M&S, but yeah,
05:24that's how we go. So overall, I'd say Tesco one, solid, reliable, does what it says on the tin,
05:31you know, good value for money. M&S one, they hit some peaks with the Colin and the sandwich was
05:35definitely high quality, but the price set it back a lot. But yeah, anyway, that's just my
05:40takes. Let us know what you think. Let us know if you're an absolute adherent to M&S meal deals and
05:45you get one every single day, then let us know. Let us know if you absolutely love it, or if
05:48you're a club card aficionado and you're always heading down to your local Tesco to grab yourself
05:52a meal deal as well. Let us know what you think. Thanks for watching. Stay tuned for more festive
05:56content coming out on the food and drink front in the next few days as well, and have a lovely day.