A definitive list of the Pret menu items you know, deep down, to be terrible

Face it, we have spent years getting excited about bang average sarnies

4 years ago

Greg Barradale, Emily Shead, Maddy Ando, Olivia Vosper & Phoebe Burns

Everyone’s had it: For ages, you’ve barely been able to resist, spent all your money on keeping them happy, taken God knows how many train journeys with only the consolation of their embrace on the other side, and then the ick comes crashing in. Except this time it’s not with a boy. It’s with the UK’s most cherished and bougie sandwich chain.

All the talk of Pret being the key to saving the economy really raises the question: why?

Think about it long and hard, and you’ll start to realise just how many bang average items there are on the Pret menu. We’re turning the guns on one of the last things we truly hold dear. Here are the worst offenders.

Chicken and bacon baguette

It used to bang but the ingredients just don’t hit anymore. More sour than salty and more mushy than crisp, it’s completely fallen off. If I’m paying £5 for a chicken and bacon sandwich I expect it to taste like a chicken and bacon sandwich >:(

Tuna Nicoise salad

Might be nice idk but who the fuck wants eggs and tuna?

Falafel and halloumi hot wrap

A falafel wrap for mums who think falafel is awfully exotic and pronounce hummus with seven syllables. Ignore the fact some parts are scalding and some freezing cold. Ignore the fact half of the wrap will snap off in your hand and the rest will just dissolve – it’s the filling that’s the issue.

Halloumi, so sparse and barely recognisable as halloumi. The falafel, essentially a paste. An insult to hot wraps.

Never has a shelf promised so much but delivered so little

Egg and spinach snack pot

Everything about this “snack” screams gross. Cold egg *yuk*, sloppy spinach *yuk*, the weird green tinged liquid at the bottom *yuk*. Pret need to stop and have a long hard think about this frankly vile concoction.

Their insistence on still giving bags to anyone and everyone regardless of the fact that you only get a sandwich and apple can’t be good.

Hoisin duck wrap

It promises so much, yet delivers so little. Didn’t know it was possible to make a sauce dry, but Pret somehow accomplishes it.

Tuna melt

When all you want is a simple hot sarnie but they’ve added so many millions of capers that it tastes like Conor McGregor’s sweat.

Smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich

This really ought to be the pride and joy of a posh sandwich shop, however, the cream cheese is always suspiciously solid.. and tasteless.. and gross..?

This sandwich gets a pass

Egg breakfast baguette

Nice idea, but it all ends up on your lap rather than in your gob.

The bananas

Look I know this isn’t a sandwich or a salad or a usual Pret item, but ask yourself: Have you ever had a good banana from Pret?

The answer is no.

The carrot and cucumber stick pot with humous

As dry as the Sahara desert and as expensive as a Fabergé egg.

Humous and crudites platter

£7.49 (£8.99 dine-in) for some cut up veg and a dollop of hummus? Sound. Pret called it “excellent value”. Excellent.

The coffee

In reality, Pret coffee is terrible. Coffee flavoured dish water.

The breakfast brioches

If you got this from a greasy spoon, you’d be sorely disappointed. I’m sorry, this is just a fact. The only reason you put up with it is because you’re hungover, don’t have any better options, and would rather be literally anywhere else.

Hummus and chipotle wrap

They really phoned it in with this one, didn’t they. If you were making a wrap at home and only had humous and a bit of salad, you probably wouldn’t bother. You’d lay it all down and realise it needed something additional to even be counted as a wrap.

Kale and cauli mac and cheese

Cauliflower cheese is everyone’s least favourite primary school dinner, I don’t need a remix with added kale. Managing to mess up mac and cheese is truly astounding, yet Pret somehow achieve it, because they just can’t stop themselves from unnecessarily adding leafy greens to everything. This is Pinterest mom behaviour, trying to “trick the kids into getting their greens”.

Everything else is okay, I guess.

Contributions from: Lucy Woodham, Harry Ainsworth