I'm back on being annoyed by cheese sandwiches again. You'll remember the upset caused by the Camden Food Company's stance on a cheese and ham panini – and their frankly non-sensible – not to mention insensible – belief that a toasted cheese sandwich would be somehow improved by the addition of cheese sauce. The result was a soggy turdwich with a homoeopathic hint of actual cheese. Whatever they'd used as the cheese was, at best, aspirationally mild.
Anyway, that was a lesson only partly learned. Let's introduce yet another failure to the pantheon of failed attempts at putting cheese in bread. The Pret 'posh cheddar and pickle baguette.' OK, I should have known this sandwich was doomed because it included the word 'posh.' It's a cheese sandwich, not Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Firstly, the cheese. It was apparently mature. It was hard to say, there were two thin slivers jammed into the baguette. And by jammed, I mean jammed, by about four gallons of sugary 'pickle.' Pickle is, well, supposed to pickle. There should be a shout of vinegar. This was smothered to death under a sugary blanket. They didn't stop there. No, because they'd declared it to be 'posh' they did what I suppose is the posh thing to do and added some chewy lumps of sundried tomato. Why? I don't know. Does a cheese and pickle sandwich cry out for sundried tomatoes? Did anyone ever in the history of mankind say the words 'do you know what these cheese and pickle sandwich needs? Sundried tomato, that's what." No, because the only people who think like that are under professional care and taking a lot of medication.
Not stopping there, they added some cress and some red onion, which at least enjoyed being permissible additions to a cheese and pickle sandwich, and a gasp towards the fable five-a-day, and – wait for it – mayonnaise. Because a sandwich already drowning under a tsunami of its own pickle needs more gloopy condiment.
The result was a sandwich that really was mostly condiment. The flaccid cheese was hanging out of the side like the tongue of a long-drowned man. Alas, the real test came in eating this sandwich, because about two mouthfuls in, the overabundance of lubricating condiments ensured the contents oozed out as though the were making a break for it and splatted down on my boot where to be honest they didn't manage to look much worse than in the sandwich. Even a passing dog took one look and thought 'nah.' I had, for my trouble, a damp lump of bread and a need to find a bin.
FFS, people. Cheese, bread, butter, some veg, a modest spread of mayo if you must. That's it. Stop fucking with it.