Greggs

I didn't have a good impression of Greggs right from the start.

The first time I heard about it was when I chanced upon an article on the Daily Mail, in which a Greggs employee acts like a gassed eight-year old and decides to badmouth artisan bread-maker, Paul Hollywood, for doing the plaited loaves all wrong and speaking like an Enid Blyton narrator. Accompanying the article was this picture of a Greggs shopfront:

I am not a big fan of the storefront. It looks more like a bookstore than a bakery to me.

The other thing is, you can't insult Paul Hollywood, you simply can't.

Just look at all that adorable-ness.

Bam. No one can make bread-making look more epic than the Hollywood.

The whole thing was probably a publicity stunt by Greggs, but nevertheless I chose Greggs, out of curiosity, as a lunch option while shopping in Hounslow.

The café section was preceded by a bakery section. I think. There were about two shelves, which contained doughnuts, muffins, and loaves which looked very neat and identical.

Moving on to the café section, they had yogurts, salads, pasties, cakes, Danish pastries, croques, sandwiches, pasta, coffee, and other quintessential café food items. The prices were really appealing, with pasties costing about £1.50 and a bowl of pasta for £2.99. 

A steak bake pasty and an iced apple cream Danish cost me exactly £3.

The steak bake was puff pastry filled with beef stew. I loved the warm, creamy and hearty taste of the beef stew, which were quite generous chunks.

Emma, my food buddy for the day, tried some of my dessert. After the meal, I commented, "I do wish that there was more apple in it, though."

She replied, "It was supposed to have apple in it?"

The Danish pastry sandwiched a thin layer of apple and sauce under a thick poof of whipped cream, storybook style. The apple's taste was drowned out under the cream which was a bit much, and I could only occasionally feel its gooey texture.

Greggs is a good option for a cheap café lunch, with tasty-looking pastries and a few other limited options for savoury items, which includes customisable sandwiches (Emma: "The lady took forever to make my sandwich, and look, all my onions are falling out.") and fish fingers. Not somewhere to return to day-after-day, but alright when on a budget and for convenience's sake. Their next step will be to redesign their banner and stop being so cocky and dissing my Hollywood.

Greggs (Hounslow)

181 High Street

Middlesex

TW3 1BL

Tel: 0208 577 2890