Subway - food review: I ate possibly the worst sandwich on sale in Portsmouth

At heart I believe that going out to eat should be a joy, a pleasure and – crucially – a treat; go out too often and the excitement is lost. But also I’m often skint.

That’s why to afford a carvery it’s worth packing a box of salad on a Monday and a Tuesday, and to justify chips on Friday night you should bring a sandwich on Wednesday and Thursday.

And that, in turn, is why I don’t know much about Subway. It’s not a place to go out for a meal, and so I feel no need to go there. I’ve been once before and it smelled… odd. Very plasticky.

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But as part of the deal to seek high and low on the culinary ladder, I decided to give it a go, along with a friend who is a self-confessed Subway fan. Where I at first didn’t understand how it all worked on my previous visit, he is on first-name terms with the staff and can recite from memory all the different types of bread. He’s that kind of regular.

On walking in, the posters made it clear that there had been some changes recently. Where as the reason for my discombobulation last time out was having questions asked of me all the time (thus getting a personalised sandwich) this time the menu highlights that the new Subway Series range is ‘chosen by us’, ie just made one way. While there are still sandwiches you can tinker with, it looks like the idea is to simplify and speed up the process – a shame for people who enjoy ‘a bit of everything from the salad section please’, though.

So, on to the food. I chose The Baller (£7.69), which promised pork and beef meatballs, pepperoni, Monterey Jack cheddar, peppers and marinara sauce. I should be too old to fall for this now, but it really did not look like the promotional picture. After a light toasting it was pleasingly warm in its wrapper, but the stacked, juicy creation of publicity was in reality a flattened, limp affair.

Now looks aren’t everything, but in this case sadly you could read a book by its cover. The bread was dull, and old-tasting. The meatballs were sparse and, while not gristly, a bit too tough. There wasn’t much flavour coming out of the sauce other than a strong chemical tomato twang. A shaking of crispy onions did what it said it should, though.

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I thought my friend would appreciate lunch out, but he was as equally downhearted, calling the new menu ‘a big swing and a miss’. He took aim at the salad portions inside the subs, calling them ‘borderline pathetic’, and said his Big Cheese Steak (£8.59) was squashed, overcooked and utterly underwhelming, leaving him saying Subway should take things back to how they were.

It’s such a funny food, a Subway sandwich. It doesn’t taste like anything else, but sadly in this case that’s not a compliment. It’s like if AI devised a recipe – it’s technically all there but something is missing; instead of a normal taste there’s tang of preservatives and artificial food – the worst of American dining. If you are not a lunch-maker or find yourself out for longer than expected, Portsmouth has plenty of decent sandwich shops, coffee houses and cafes to go to – think Andre’s Food Bar, Melted, Southsea Coffee, Baffled Coffee and so on. Don’t waste your cash on this overpriced, under-tasty rubbish.

Subway

Food 2

Value 2

Ambience N/A

CHild-friendly N/A