Food The hunt continues. Trying not to exhaust the obvious sources, I realised the other day that there'll be sandwich shops and cafes which only exist in certain places like railway stations. Over the next few weeks I'll be checking Pumpkins, Travellers Rest and Upper Crust, all of which much surely have their offerings, but there'll also hopefully be some independents to have a gander at and that's why I found myself in the Cafe Express at Chester Station.
There's some stiff competition here. Across the concourse is a large Costa and opposite there's a WH Smith which also sells sandwiches. But the dates on its Trip Advisor reviews suggest its been there since at least 2015 perhaps remaining popular due to its unfussy nature. It has small frontage on the concourse so there aren't any barriers for someone who needs some drinks and snacks but doesn't have much time to wait between trains.
This is a very basic sandwich, especially considering the price, £3.65, something you could easily make at home. The ingredients label on the back is incredibly thorough which means we're in the unusual situation of knowing who their supplier is, a company called Brakes. It's this brown bread, this sliced turkey, this sage and onion stuffing and this cranberry sauce.
Which means we're also able to calculate the mark-up. Bread is 9p a slice, two of those, 18p. Turkey is 10p a slice, two of those, 20p. Sauce is a 1p a gram so 2p. Stuffing is also 1p a gram so what 5p. We'll ignore the trade discount. So that's 35p to make which means there's a £3.30 mark up per sandwich although obviously a proportion of that will be for staff and rental both of which must be quite high.
Given all of that, how does it taste? Like a sandwich you could make at home. It's unremarkable. The bread is heavy, the turkey insubstantial, the sauce is sweet and the stuffing barely registers. It's not inedible and I expect on a long train journey when its the only thing accessible in that moment could be quite welcome or comforting, especially with a hot cup of coffee. It is what it is.
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