I had a legendary Greggs festive bake for the first time in my life this Christmas

As a pretty devoted Greggs adherent who has had his fair share of sausage rolls, steak bakes, and slices of sweet pepperoni pizza down the years, I must admit that I’ve never really been tempted by any of their other offerings - their admirable vegan items, their fancy limited edition this or seasonal that. Just give me a sausage roll and a brew any day.

As a result, I’ve never tried their festive bake - described by the Geordie pastry purveyors themselves as being ‘made from a delicious crumb topped pastry, filled with pieces of chicken, sage & onion stuffing and sweetcure bacon, covered in a creamy sage & cranberry sauce.’ I mean, it sounds fine, but it’s no steak bake…

Anyways, this Christmas, I decided to pop my Greggs festive bake cranberry cherry and dive in headfirst to see what all the fuss was about. Having obtained the scaldingly hot parcel of gooey Christmas goodness, my first impression was that the pastry looked very different to the usual gear thanks to the aforementioned crumb topping. I liked it.

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The taste was good - my initial bites were very much dominated by the sage and onion stuffing as I assume that’s what constituted the majority of my snack given its relative cheapness. But then the odd bit of creamy chicken and the sweet cut-through of the cranberry started to appear, although I missed the bacon, I must admit.

Overall, I missed the rich and classic flavour of the steak bake, I wanted more uniformity in each bite - a guarantee of lip-smacking gravy or piping-hot pepper sausage meat. It was okay, but I don’t think the festive bake will have me hankering for Greggs’ grub like their OG options do. Still, there’s no shame in not being as good as the legendary steak bake.