Food Sleuth has a 'four-course meal' at Greggs -…

Food Sleuth has a 'four-course meal' at Greggs - including a vegan sausage roll

A vegan high street sausage roll? I’d have thought you could have more fun traversing shark-infested waters in a white-hot barbed wire canoe. Even so, Greggs gave me the V-sign this spring and credited its new treat for meat-swervers for a buoyant start to the company’s trading year.

I was surprised, for I was never a fan of the firm’s proper sausage roll. Perhaps I have been unlucky at local shops operated by Britain’s biggest baker, but I never took to what seemed like salty pink paste in a soggy pastry roll.

The vegan job passes muster, to judge from my raid on Greggs this week. I won’t say which shop, for the offer is pretty well universal among the firm’s 20-odd outlets in Greater Nottingham and the 1,700 in the national chain.

The scored pastry was actually dry – not crisp, but at least not soggy – and the filling was firm and “meaty” in its own savoury way, although perhaps still too salty for some. Given the choice between the vegan effort and the firm’s standard sausage roll, for me it would be the V-job every time.

The Greggs vegan sausage roll has been a sell-out success but what did our meat-eating Sleuth think? (Joseph Raynor/ Nottingham Post)

In the world of snackeries and buttie vendors, I’m something of a Bird’s man. The pork pies, potted beef and scrambled egg sandwiches are in classes of their own.

My posher friends – those for whom mango juice, avocado and king prawns are daily staples – swear by Pret a Manger, and it was a Pret chum who once saw me sneaking out of a Greggs with a budget takeaway luncheon and inquired if I was losing my judgment.

I pointed out that the higher-end Greggs sarnies were perfectly acceptable. And (a topical point, for the British take on Christmas 2019 is about to begin) the firm’s mince pies regularly top blind tastings.

Greggs' customers prefer vegan sausage roll to meat one according to poll

The vegan sausage roll revelations, however, prompted me to update my appraisal of Greggs, which began life in the early 1950s, providing daily bread to the good folk of Tyneside.

After checking the vegan sausage roll, I sampled one of the two soups of the day: a cream of tomato, which was like a slightly thinner version of the biggest brand name in cream of tomato soups: orange-to-red, sweetly fruity and rather pleasant.

My main event, as I watched Nottingham office workers forming a midday queue, was the southern fried chicken baguette. It was harmless enough, if we discount the American diner habit of hurling cheese on everything, now matter how tasty it already is. Onions and a hint of chilli pickle gave the dish some moisture.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the meal was my bag of Greggs cheddar and onion crisps. They may not be in the Pipers or Tyrrells class for flavour, but they were very dry, very crisp and not in the least bit salty (0.51g per 40g bag).

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I signed off with a dessert: strawberry and granola yogurt.

Happily, the strawberry element, at the bottom of the pot, was a compote rather than a sickly jam. I don’t quite get granola – I prefer the horse food that comes out of my porridge oats box, or even some of the less operatic mueslis – but I tipped the stuff into the yogurt and fruit and congratulated myself on downing, for once, a healthy-ish pudding.

The shop, by the way, was spotless and the service friendly and efficient. Pret a Manger avocado jockeys may turn up their noses but a lot at Greggs is OK with me.