Because nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a sausage roll
January 29, 2018 2:07 PM Subscribe
In romantic Britain, Le Greggs, artisanal bakery of finest Christmas themed cuisine, are providing Valentines Day meals for the first time this year. The menu features béchamel toasted honey cured ham, your choice of signature puff pastry parcel, and Belgian dark chocolate brownie. Or perhaps a seasoned pork and puff pastry cheese slider and blue cheese en croute for starters? Bookings open on February 7th, while candles, waiter service and background classical music will come as standard. Perhaps invite someone famous? Restaurants in four cultural cities (London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester) are taking reservations, plus Newcastle. Bon appetite! Post title, and a bonus: Steak Bake picture.
But I thought the best way to say “I love you” was with the gift of a spatula.
This explains so much.
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:35 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
This explains so much.
posted by cyclopticgaze at 2:35 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
The chip shop owned by the family of a guy who was in my class in college does variations on this theme most Valentine's Days such as this sit down meal in 2014 and this speed dating table last year.
posted by kersplunk at 2:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by kersplunk at 2:38 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
They can draw on all the wonders of British cuisine and they left it for some nasty foreign muck. Why didn't they go for something like "Would you like to get some Toad in the Hole this Valentine's Day? If you show him your Bangers and Mash he'll slip you some Spotted Dick."
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:37 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:37 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]
A Greggs 'slice', rather like its wan, chalky cousin, the 'Ginsters', is what results when some alien being lacking the senses of taste, sight and smell describes a Cornish pasty to a similar alien, via the medium of metaphor in a language with only three words (all of them synonyms for 'bland'), and the second alien bakes what it thinks the first alien has just described.
posted by pipeski at 3:47 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 3:47 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]
Because nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a sausage roll
suitors, take note, i will also accept bacon butties
posted by poffin boffin at 5:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]
suitors, take note, i will also accept bacon butties
posted by poffin boffin at 5:36 PM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]
Something, something, something...jelly roll, baby.
posted by Oyéah at 5:42 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Oyéah at 5:42 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Restaurants in four cultural cities (London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester) are taking reservations, plus Newcastle.
Ouch, has the Toon offended?
posted by taterpie at 5:44 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]
Ouch, has the Toon offended?
posted by taterpie at 5:44 PM on January 29, 2018 [5 favorites]
She did not return my portion of our CD collection. I am unforgiving, even decades on.
posted by Wordshore at 5:57 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Wordshore at 5:57 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
So, not knowing Greggs, but recognizing that people seem to think this is funny- is it because their food is terrible? Or it's cheap fast food but tasty, just not special? Or is it seen as a low class type of place, or super casual place, or notoriously dirty place, and so it's weird to use linen and serve wine? Is it a place everybody goes, or a place to hope to not be seen? Do people like Greggs? I love sausage rolls and rarely get to eat them here in Portland, Oregon, so if someone took me out on Valentine's day to a place with sausage rolls I'd actually be pretty thrilled.
posted by Secretariat at 5:58 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Secretariat at 5:58 PM on January 29, 2018 [3 favorites]
Because nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a sausage roll
I live in a pie and sausage roll desert, and I have been known to drive 40mins to the one bakery that sells them. They sell them parbaked as well to allow me to bring a few mince and cheese pies back for Mrs Inflatablekiwi for an occasional treat. So yip - that’s about accurate
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:21 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
I live in a pie and sausage roll desert, and I have been known to drive 40mins to the one bakery that sells them. They sell them parbaked as well to allow me to bring a few mince and cheese pies back for Mrs Inflatablekiwi for an occasional treat. So yip - that’s about accurate
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:21 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Meanwhile in the States, White Castle and Waffle House are taking reservations for Valentine’s Day.
posted by ardgedee at 6:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ardgedee at 6:33 PM on January 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
From this Yank's perspective, Greggs reminded me of a Panera meets Dunkin Donuts. If that makes any sense.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:08 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:08 PM on January 29, 2018 [2 favorites]
Or it's cheap fast food but tasty, just not special? Or is it seen as a low class type of place, or super casual place, and so it's weird to use linen and serve wine? Is it a place everybody goes, or a place to hope to not be seen? Do people like Greggs?
Pretty much all of those, yes. It's perceived as being lower class because the food is cheap and basic. Also perceived (overlapping a bit) as being more Northern in terms of the regions where is it popular. And popular it often is; the queues at lunchtime are often long and out the door.
I like it because you can buy cheap, filling food there and be out again in a few seconds much of the time, even with a queue. In the cold days of now, you can also get a pot of hot soup and a square pasty for under three pounds. I brought a couple of my aristocrat chums, Tarquin and Jemima, to one after croquet practise last summer and they became utterly addicted to their steak bakes (see photo).
posted by Wordshore at 7:23 PM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]
Pretty much all of those, yes. It's perceived as being lower class because the food is cheap and basic. Also perceived (overlapping a bit) as being more Northern in terms of the regions where is it popular. And popular it often is; the queues at lunchtime are often long and out the door.
I like it because you can buy cheap, filling food there and be out again in a few seconds much of the time, even with a queue. In the cold days of now, you can also get a pot of hot soup and a square pasty for under three pounds. I brought a couple of my aristocrat chums, Tarquin and Jemima, to one after croquet practise last summer and they became utterly addicted to their steak bakes (see photo).
posted by Wordshore at 7:23 PM on January 29, 2018 [4 favorites]
And of the many foods they do, the bakes are their core range and what they are most famous for. That and their completely unpretentious methods of selling.
posted by Wordshore at 7:31 PM on January 29, 2018
posted by Wordshore at 7:31 PM on January 29, 2018
If Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler:
a) wasn't fictional
b) accepted a need to conform to basic food hygiene standards
Then Gregg's would be the chain he founded.
posted by garius at 12:45 AM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
a) wasn't fictional
b) accepted a need to conform to basic food hygiene standards
Then Gregg's would be the chain he founded.
posted by garius at 12:45 AM on January 30, 2018 [5 favorites]
I can't believe that Leeds isn't on the list. I a short walk away from the Greggs nexus (A spot where you can see 4 different Greggs in each cardinal direction on the compass, but none of them are doing the promotion.
So, not knowing Greggs, but recognizing that people seem to think this is funny- is it because their food is terrible? Or it's cheap fast food but tasty, just not special? Or is it seen as a low class type of place, or super casual place, or notoriously dirty place, and so it's weird to use linen and serve wine? Is it a place everybody goes, or a place to hope to not be seen? Do people like Greggs? I love sausage rolls and rarely get to eat them here in Portland, Oregon, so if someone took me out on Valentine's day to a place with sausage rolls I'd actually be pretty thrilled.
Greggs occupies rather unique place in the British psyche, it is both cheap food that is tasty, as well as low class but also visited by a vast amount of people daily. It is used by politicians and other elite to make themselves seem more "normal" in photo ops. It tends to serve things that can be eaten on the go and serve them fast and cheap. If you're out wandering in any city centre (especially Leeds, but nearly any city in the North) then you're about 500 meters from a Greggs at maximum so if you are feeling a bit peckish and it is a few hours to dinner/lunch but you just want a quick bite, you can head into a Greggs and get something to eat on the go for £2 or less. You can easily get a whole lunch for £3-£5 depending on your appetite. I think the Dunkin Donuts comparison is quite apt, but not necessarily applicable to you, Secretariat, unless you are from New England. It is essentially ubiquitous. Head over to google maps and pick any random city in the UK and just do a search for Greggs and at least 4 will pop up. If you search in major towns then there will be at least 2 and in smaller towns there will be one.
I was standing at the Greggs nexus one day quite a few years ago and a spanish student was looking a bit lost so I asked her if she needed some help. She said that she was supposed to meet her friends at Greggs in town and wondered where that was. I asked her which Greggs because saying that is like saying I'll meet you at the postbox in town and she had no idea. I told her that there are probably 8 Greggs in town and possibly more that I can't remember right now so if they are coming from the University then I would go to this one and she went off on her way, but I always wondered it she is a ghost of a lost student always trying to find her friends moving between each Greggs location for all time.
posted by koolkat at 1:46 AM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]
So, not knowing Greggs, but recognizing that people seem to think this is funny- is it because their food is terrible? Or it's cheap fast food but tasty, just not special? Or is it seen as a low class type of place, or super casual place, or notoriously dirty place, and so it's weird to use linen and serve wine? Is it a place everybody goes, or a place to hope to not be seen? Do people like Greggs? I love sausage rolls and rarely get to eat them here in Portland, Oregon, so if someone took me out on Valentine's day to a place with sausage rolls I'd actually be pretty thrilled.
Greggs occupies rather unique place in the British psyche, it is both cheap food that is tasty, as well as low class but also visited by a vast amount of people daily. It is used by politicians and other elite to make themselves seem more "normal" in photo ops. It tends to serve things that can be eaten on the go and serve them fast and cheap. If you're out wandering in any city centre (especially Leeds, but nearly any city in the North) then you're about 500 meters from a Greggs at maximum so if you are feeling a bit peckish and it is a few hours to dinner/lunch but you just want a quick bite, you can head into a Greggs and get something to eat on the go for £2 or less. You can easily get a whole lunch for £3-£5 depending on your appetite. I think the Dunkin Donuts comparison is quite apt, but not necessarily applicable to you, Secretariat, unless you are from New England. It is essentially ubiquitous. Head over to google maps and pick any random city in the UK and just do a search for Greggs and at least 4 will pop up. If you search in major towns then there will be at least 2 and in smaller towns there will be one.
I was standing at the Greggs nexus one day quite a few years ago and a spanish student was looking a bit lost so I asked her if she needed some help. She said that she was supposed to meet her friends at Greggs in town and wondered where that was. I asked her which Greggs because saying that is like saying I'll meet you at the postbox in town and she had no idea. I told her that there are probably 8 Greggs in town and possibly more that I can't remember right now so if they are coming from the University then I would go to this one and she went off on her way, but I always wondered it she is a ghost of a lost student always trying to find her friends moving between each Greggs location for all time.
posted by koolkat at 1:46 AM on January 30, 2018 [7 favorites]
Because nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a sausage roll
Her daddy was a butcher / In a pie and puddings way.
posted by Grangousier at 2:25 AM on January 30, 2018
Her daddy was a butcher / In a pie and puddings way.
posted by Grangousier at 2:25 AM on January 30, 2018
At one point, there were a few different suspiciously Greggs-like bakers, and they gradually coalesced into an über-Greggs. Leeds had Thurston's, and they were still using that name when I lived up that way in the early 90s, despite having been taken over by Greggs in the early 70s. Likewise, Greggs also owned the Braggs brand in the Midlands. Having lived in all three areas, I
can recall doing a double-take each time I discovered a familiar bakery under a completely different name. Greggs also eventually absorbed their once-ubiquitous rival Baker's Oven. This was a mercy in many ways, as Baker's Oven had always been the one you went to if you couldn't find a Greggs, and they tended to over-cook their pastry.
There are now more branches of Greggs than there are McDonald's in the UK.
The food is indeed warm, relatively tasty, and the pastry doesn't flake too badly over your clothes. Go out on any lunchtime in a major UK city, and you'll see young men on their lunch break wandering about with a chicken slice in a Greggs bag trying not to burn their faces off or slop the sauce down their ties.
posted by pipeski at 2:35 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
can recall doing a double-take each time I discovered a familiar bakery under a completely different name. Greggs also eventually absorbed their once-ubiquitous rival Baker's Oven. This was a mercy in many ways, as Baker's Oven had always been the one you went to if you couldn't find a Greggs, and they tended to over-cook their pastry.
There are now more branches of Greggs than there are McDonald's in the UK.
The food is indeed warm, relatively tasty, and the pastry doesn't flake too badly over your clothes. Go out on any lunchtime in a major UK city, and you'll see young men on their lunch break wandering about with a chicken slice in a Greggs bag trying not to burn their faces off or slop the sauce down their ties.
posted by pipeski at 2:35 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
a short walk away from the Greggs nexus (A spot where you can see 4 different Greggs in each cardinal direction on the compass,
I think one of them has closed by now, but there was a spot in Sheffield from which you could see three Greggs' (Greggsi? Greggopodes?) and, if you counted a shop window reflection letting you see round a corner, three branches of Starbucks. I assume if you stood there under a full moon and dunked a steak bake into a frappuchino something magical would happen, but never dared to find out what.
(Elsewhere in Sheffield there was a Greggs right next to my lab, and I loved going in there because the women behind the counter were all proper Yorkshire; I once got called all of "love", "flower" and "pet" in the time it took to buy a steak bake. Never scored a "duck" though, even though I'm pretty sure one of them was from Barnsley.)
posted by metaBugs at 3:03 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
I think one of them has closed by now, but there was a spot in Sheffield from which you could see three Greggs' (Greggsi? Greggopodes?) and, if you counted a shop window reflection letting you see round a corner, three branches of Starbucks. I assume if you stood there under a full moon and dunked a steak bake into a frappuchino something magical would happen, but never dared to find out what.
(Elsewhere in Sheffield there was a Greggs right next to my lab, and I loved going in there because the women behind the counter were all proper Yorkshire; I once got called all of "love", "flower" and "pet" in the time it took to buy a steak bake. Never scored a "duck" though, even though I'm pretty sure one of them was from Barnsley.)
posted by metaBugs at 3:03 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Funny, it appears their website is region locked. From New York I get a 'blocked'
posted by mikelieman at 3:15 AM on January 30, 2018
posted by mikelieman at 3:15 AM on January 30, 2018
From New York I get a 'blocked'
Is that so? Let's see what happens from a little island in the South China Sea...
posted by Mister Bijou at 4:08 AM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Is that so? Let's see what happens from a little island in the South China Sea...
www.greggs.co.uk -Well, that's as daft as our Beryl.
Access Denied
Error code 16
This request was blocked by the security rules
posted by Mister Bijou at 4:08 AM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Funny, it appears their website is region locked. From New York I get a 'blocked'
Sausage rolls will remain a mystery outside of the UK.
posted by octothorpe at 4:18 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Sausage rolls will remain a mystery outside of the UK.
posted by octothorpe at 4:18 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
They're using Incapsula, and in this case they appear to have configured it to behave like a shitty Cloudflare including seemingly using some of the same graphics as Cloudflare's 504 error page.
Since nobody outside the UK can complain to Gregg's online, maybe contact Incapsula and ask why.
posted by ardgedee at 6:22 AM on January 30, 2018
Since nobody outside the UK can complain to Gregg's online, maybe contact Incapsula and ask why.
posted by ardgedee at 6:22 AM on January 30, 2018
(Knowing a tiny bit about Incapsula that will be a rule that the Greggs website team have configured rather than something for Incapsula themselves)
posted by toamouse at 6:33 AM on January 30, 2018
posted by toamouse at 6:33 AM on January 30, 2018
Could this be some sort of Greggs cyberdefence gambit to fend off any attacks, intrusions, theft of sausage rolls by American and Chinese cyberwarriors?
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:48 AM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Mister Bijou at 6:48 AM on January 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
Could this be some sort of Greggs cyberdefence gambit to fend off any attacks, intrusions, theft of sausage rolls
it's simply that those of us across the pond have not been initiated into the Mysteries, and are therefore not yet prepared for the unveiling of the Vision that is the sausage roll. one must respect the old rites. one must do these things properly.
it's simply that those of us across the pond have not been initiated into the Mysteries, and are therefore not yet prepared for the unveiling of the Vision that is the sausage roll. one must respect the old rites. one must do these things properly.
As the Roll comes, greet it, saying "Greggs, greatly hail! Purveyors of much bounty, of many slices and bakes." As the Roll comes, from the ground you shall see it, you uninitiated, and gaze not from the roof or from aloft - child nor wife nor maid that has shed her hair - neither then nor when we spit from parched mouths fasting.posted by halation at 7:12 AM on January 30, 2018 [2 favorites]
Lord Jesus | suseJ dorL = susejd rol = Sausage Roll
The | is a mirror proving that Greggs reflects god.
posted by koolkat at 7:16 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
The | is a mirror proving that Greggs reflects god.
posted by koolkat at 7:16 AM on January 30, 2018 [4 favorites]
Why cook out when you can share and show your love at home?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:18 AM on January 30, 2018
Many of us will be celebrating Valentine’s DayNothing says 'I love you' like a heart-shaped steak by a local grocery storethis weekend – even though the actual date is Monday. Why? Because Mondays are hectic and soccer practice is not romantic.
So today’s post is dedicated to all you lovers out there who will be celebrating/drooling this weekend . . . steak lovers, that is!
I give you: HEART-SHAPED STEAKS.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:18 AM on January 30, 2018
Guardian: Pie in the sky ideas – how Greggs became king of the publicity stunt.
posted by Wordshore at 8:58 AM on January 30, 2018
posted by Wordshore at 8:58 AM on January 30, 2018
When I lived in Utah, I would buy sausage rolls for breakfast at a local convenience chain. Assuming we’re talking about the same thing (breakfast sausage wrapped in a flaky pastry dough).
Yes, I eat garbage food.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:31 PM on January 31, 2018
Yes, I eat garbage food.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:31 PM on January 31, 2018
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QFT
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:29 PM on January 29, 2018 [7 favorites]