Tuesday 12 December 2023 11:30 am | Updated: Friday 15 December 2023 4:10 pm

Festive, err, fun: The best (and worst) Christmas food from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Pret and more

The best – and worst – Christmas food from supermarkets

We’ve published our annual ranking of the best (and worst) Christmas food so you know which to include on your festive table this year.

We’ve included products from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Boots, Pret, Waitrose and Co-op. We’ve selected vegan, vegetarian and meat lunch options. Here’s what to pick, and what to avoid, before the big day.

AMAZON FRESH PIGS UNDER BLANKETS, £3.90 The idea that Amazon makes Christmas food that can be bought on the high street is more than a little terrifying. It is a pertrifying sign from the future, like the robots that deliver food to homes by trundling along sidewalks and over zebra crossings in America. Anyway, this pigs in blankets sarnie is a little too cardboardy, limp and sad, probably a bit like the warehouse it was mass produced in.

BOOTS TURKEY FEAST SANDWICH, £3.25 It must be said that Boots does not tend to do well in the annual City A.M. Christmas sandwich taste test, and this year was no exception. A smattering of smashed turkey fragments, folds of insipid bacon, too little on the mayo front. It’s hard to pin down exactly what’s wrong with it, more a death by a thousand beige carbohydrates. By the third or fourth bite eating something so inherently tasteless becomes an ordeal. Avoid.

Pret food is God tier. Their vegan Christmas sandwich is proof that we should stop eating meat and just focus on butternut squash full time.

TESCO FESTIVE DUO, £3 Wait, hold up: this sandwich can’t call itself Christmassy. There’s one pig in blanket triangle and one turkey and bacon, which is no one’s idea of a knees-up come 3pm on the 25th December. Turkey and pigs in blankets maybe, but turkey and bacon? They don’t go together ordinarily and certainly not at Christmas. This is some wretched imposter. Neither are terrible – in fact the sausage is pretty nice, but don’t try to cheat us with two halves of a Christmas sandwich.

WAITROSE BRIE AND CRANBERRY, £3.95 Waitrose is always a safe and motherly pair of hands, especially when it comes to their Christmas food. This brie and cranberry number has a brilliant spread of ingredients and textures, and has clearly been put together by a very diligent member of Santa’s Christmas sandwich team. None of these ingredients piled atop one another tastes cheap. The cranberry sauce wasn’t too sweet either, just a classy little number between two sheets of bread.

PRET NUT ROAST, £4.75 If you’ve got a bad word to say about Pret then I don’t want to hear it. Their food is God tier. This vegan sandwich is proof that we should stop eating meat and just focus on butternut squash full time. Vegan flavours done well beat meat at least 70 percent of the time, and this colorful, vibrant, well stuffed nut roast sandwich is proof of that. Wrap it up and stick it under the tree: I’ll be delighted.

PRET XMAS LUNCH, £4.99 If Pret can’t get a Christmas sandwich right, then what hope do any of us have? We may as well abandon our loaves of wholemeal and revert to slurping the filling from our cupped hands like miserable cavemen. But Pret does get it right – it even manages to avoid the common pitfall of everything blending into a single brown mulch. It’s light and zippy, the kind of sandwich you could get used to.

The first thing that hits you about this vegan number is the colour. In a sea of beige, this stands out with its dark, rusty colour, like the upturned hull of some Soviet-era ship

CO-OP BOXING DAY LUNCH, £3.25 This is another Christmas food item that makes me question its Christmas credentials. It’s essentially a ham and coleslaw sarnie with a bit of turkey thrown on top. But I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt. There’s something nostalgic about its unapologetic use of white bread and, honestly, I can imagine making it on Boxing Day, peeling back the carefully clingfilmed bowls and just slapping anything I can find between two white crusts. I’m here for it.

PURE RUDOLPH’S ROOTS, £4.99 OK, so I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, Rudolph’s Roots is a decent warp, filled with ingredients that taste genuinely fresh. It doesn’t do that thing where all the filling is hanging out the ends so you’re tricked into buying something that’s essentially a flap of empty bread. They’re good wraps, Brent. But on the other hand, can you just put the word “Rudolph” in front of something and call it Christmas? If you were served this supposed Christmas food in May would you be surprised? I don’t think so.

SAINSBURY’S VEGAN PIGS UNDER BLANKETS, £3 The first thing that hits you about this vegan number is the colour. In a sea of beige, this stands out with its dark, rusty colour, like the upturned hull of some Soviet-era ship, capsized in a long-dried-out river, exposed to the elements, slowly returning to nature. It’s also as salty as the sea, which makes it fairly hard-going despite it actually tasting pretty good (again, that could just be the salt).

SAINSBURY’S TURKEY FEAST, £3 Not going to lie, when this came out of its packet it had that cold meat smell that never hits right. Overall, this is the Louis Walsh of sandwiches: relatable, but despite being pretty bang average, there’s something well-meaning about it. I wouldn’t rush back but I also wouldn’t cower in a corner if this sandwich ended up in my meal deal again.