M&S Christmas food - hit and miss

[lulujuju]

I always order at least £100 worth of Christmas food from M&S but this is the first year I've found things to be hit and miss.
The hits were:
Cauliflower cheese
Chocolate pine cones
Brie en croute
Vegan nut roast
Black Forest gateaux

The misses were:
Pigs in blankets - full of gristle
Brandy cream, salted caramel cream and chocolate cream (all bought in store) - all just tasted of nothing!
Sausage wreath - really greasy

I was also really disappointed by all of their party food.

We had the mini toad in the holes that I liked and the mini chicken Kievs which were ok. We also bought standard things like salmon and broccoli quiche which are always good. But you have all just reminded me I still have a box of m&s chocolate truffles in the cupboard! Off to investigate those...

Brandy butter and brandy cream, disappointing, no taste other than over sweet.

Sticky toffee pudding bites with sauce, far too much of a faff to prepare, and very poor value as absolutely minuscule.

Brussels Pâté with port and cranberry jelly, jelly quite slimy & runny and very sweet, the sweetness had permeated into the pâté, so the whole dish tasted sweet rather than savoury.

Turkey crown - brilliant, I had reservations about just getting a crown as thought it might be dry but it was great.
Shin of beef- amazing. I keep thinking about it it was that good, and the bordelaise sauce that came with it was gorgeous.
Woodland chocolate cake- delicious, not too sickly, all of us loved it.
Colin- in the freezer for another time as lots of other Christmas food on the go!

Not necessarily Christmas food, but bought the cheese and bacon rolls rather than the posh sausage rolls by accident. They were disgusting, went in the bin which is unheard of in this house!

All of the sausage products were horriby greasy and gristly! The bacon on pigs in blankets was pure fat.
Brandy butter tasted of air!

Thankfully we only had the M&S bits for boxing day to top up our leftovers, I cooked all fresh butcher's products on Christmas day .

We had the Beef Shin

One of the nicest things we've ever eaten - so much of it I've turned it into 20 stew meals

Also liked the profiteroles- big stack

M&S Gluten Free Mince Pies are the best in the land. Wish I’d bought more than one box but never had them before and didn’t want to buy loads and hate them.

Yes, I agree with your list on the whole.

I ordered £150 worth of Christmas food from M&S.

The hits were:
Cauliflower cheese
Chocolate pine cones
Vegan nut roast - delicious
Chocolate trifle
Three bird roast
melt in the middle christmas pudding - amazing

The misses were:
Brie en croute - stinky and sticky
Pigs in blankets - very fatty bacon
Brandy cream - hardly tasted of anything
Sausage wreath - bland
Extra special mince pies - rock hard

Usually get our turkey from there but chose Sainsbury’s this year and it wasn’t as good.

Oh and the upright yule log cake thing, which we ordered was also delicious.

I read on another thread that M&S have changed supplier so maybe that's why the quality seems to have dipped?

I'm not sure if I'll bother ordering for this Christmas.

Clementine snow globe gin was nice

What were those chunks of sugar on Colin? Not good. And the pigs in blankets were truly awful.

Cauliflower cheese, goose fat potatoes and braised red cabbage were lovely though.

I always make my own stuffing, pigs in blankets, Christmas pudding, mince pies etc... this year I thought I'd try some M&S food.... Black Forest gateaux, sausage roll ring, pigs in blankets with stuffing balls and Collin the caterpillar Christmas roll, we weren't that impressed to be honest and won't be ordering again next year.

Brandy butter -tasteless
Vanilla clotted cream - inedible, tasted of goat
Percy Pig Phizzy drink - watery and only vaguely grape flavoured

Colin looked so dull-coloured and boring I couldn’t bring myself to buy it.

Another disappointed with pigs in blankets. Also didn't think the Christmas Colin was that good, as others said the decorations were very sweet.

The chorizo pigs in blankets were absolutely incredible. The normal ones were, I agree, fatty. Thought the stuffing slab was great aswell.
I found they'd really scaled back on party food this year but we e joyed the pork belly squares. Did anyone manage to get the lobster mac n cheese?

Salted caramel profiteroles were delicious.

Colin the caterpillar cake tasted very artificial.

@DobbyTheHouseElk

Colin the Christmas tree caterpillar 🐛 was very dry. So disappointed Brandy butter was tasteless

Red cabbage - amazing
Salmon en croute - good

Out Colin the caterpillar went in the bin today after about a quarter eaten

The chocolate baubles were too big and the cake was dry.

Chocolate panettone was dry with a strange citrus tang to it. Had much better from Costco.

The amontillado Sherry trifle didn't taste of Sherry. Very creamy but no flavour.

The little buffet burgers. The buns went as hard as rock after a few minutes. Half of them went in the bin. Very disappointing.

The rest of the things from M&S were just ok.

I thought the party food was good! I loved the prawns in blankets and lobster Mac and cheese. Turkey crown was as good as turkey crown is. No complaints about the pigs in blankets although I liked the nutmeg ones from Waitrose better.

The salted caramel profiterole stack was way too sickly! Ham joint was well received and the mini chicken kievs were lovely. Glad we didn't go for their pigs in blankets, if they were that bad Christmas would have been ruined for me! Was really tempted to try the marmite crumpets but they didn't seem especially festive, just novelty so gave them a miss. Party food overall was pretty uninspiring. I have the snow globe gin but haven't got round to trying it yet, the bottle alone is worth it though! Their blacksticks blue cheese was my favorite for this years board, should have bought more!

In our house:
molten cheese - too rich
3 bird roast was fine, but the bacon crust was disgusting
Pigs in blankets - same disgusting bacon
Carrot and swede - too much nutmeg. Stop it!
Baked ham - too much clove. Yum.

Hits were
Beef
Goose fat potatoes
All sweet things - profiteroles, salted caramel trifle, chocolate log.

Only bought buffet stuff this year as the DC wanted a buffet instead of a dinner. Marmite crumpets were a huge hit, as were the battered sausages with curry dip.

It was my first time catering Christmas from M and S - would usually cook, but was anticipating being heavily pregnant. In the end I had a 3 day old newborn, so v glad of M and S assistance!!

In common with others, hits were roast potatoes, turkey crown, red cabbage, carrot and swede crush and cauliflower cheese.

Misses were the pigs and stuffing parcels - the former v fatty and the latter very meaty with not much other flavour. The parsnips and sprouts (posh ones with chestnut), whilst well flavoured, would NOT cook, so were slightly crunchy, even at bubble and squeak stage. Most disappointing was the chocolate orange pudding - I was hoping it would be more chocolatey and orangey, but was in fact a bog standard Xmas pud with very large and not very pleasant caramelised orange slices stuck to the outside

It was fine, in that the main dinner components were tasty, and overall convenient, but not so good overall I’d be rushing to do it again next year. I miss the reliability of knowing that everything will be high quality!