Paddington Lunch Box

Tag: Christmas

  • From The Ashes Parilla @ Market Halls

    From The Ashes Parilla @ Market Halls

    Christmas was approaching so there was only one thing to do – find another Christmas sandwich at Market Halls. Tell me you do the same?

    So it was the turn of From The Ashes Parilla – I’ve eaten their food before and always been impressed.

    Alas, this was a bit underwhelming – a bit like Christmas Day when you are an adult.

    So it turns up as a ciabatta (ish) sandwich cut in half with a bowl of gravy.

    Said gravy was cold and didn’t really taste of anything.

    The bread was pretty good quality to be fair, a little crispy on the outside.

    The bacon was very crispy – too much for my tastes, the sausages decent enough but were still kind of ordinary, not a herby butcher’s sausage that you might expect. Or at least hope for at Christmas. Maybe I really was badly behaved this year. Maybe Santa is actually my CEO and he has seen that I hate commuting.

    Turkey slices were reasonable, quite tender and juicy for turkey.

    It’s a tricky one to judge From The Ashes Parilla from their Christmas sandwich – really the correct thing to do is to go to their smoker at The Five Points Courtyard and order the short-rib.

    This was never going to live up to that, but I do feel more effort and love could have been put into this Christmas sandwich.

    My score is a 6.1 out of 10. But it is just one sandwich…they are far better than this.

  • 20ft Fried Chicken @ Market Halls

    20ft Fried Chicken @ Market Halls

    It is the season for choosing whether to freeze on the way to work and cope with the office temperature, or cope with the outside temperature and boil in the office.

    And it is also the season for Christmas sandwiches – this week at 20ft Fried Chicken.

    Or Crimbmo Sando’s, if you are linguistically challenged.

    Sadly they’d run out of stuffing, for the Crimbo Sando (please don’t make me type this again), though I still fancied that more than the Pigs in Blanket burger that seems to have no pigs in blankets, from what I can see.

    However, stuffing was replaced with an extra chicken tender, so all was not lost, apart from the spirit of Christmas. Sorry, spirit of Crimbo.

    So I had to use a knife and fork, which given my distaste of the spelling of sandwich, you might not be too surprised by.

    The chicken tenders were excellent – juicy and perfectly cooked. There was some kind of spicy sauce, tomato-ish perhaps – unexpected too.

    Cabbage was softly braised, the bread a bit basic – with missing crusts. Why? Or do sando’s not have crusts on all 4 sides?

    Finally, the only bit which perhaps remained Christmas-ish, the chicken gravy which looked weird and there was far too little of, but also was quite heavenly in a minimal way. Lots of chicken fat going on in that gravy.

    Rating? Oh I don’t know…7 out of 10 perhaps? I’d go again to 20ft Fried Chicken, but I love fried chicken nearly half as much as working from home.