8 September, 2003
Today's Pret
- More than mozzerela: basil, rocket, mozzerela, pine nuts, mysterious sauce. Good in places but mainly bland, and mozzerela doesn't feel very substantial even though it's very good mozzerela. More basil would have made it more interesting. Generally not tasty enough, nor particularly satisfying.
- Pret cranberry cola: Pret's marketing centers around the lack of chemicals in its food, so I was interested to see what was in "cranberry cola". The ingredients list: grape juice, carbonated water(40%), cranberry juice (only 10%), grape extract, citric acid, ascorbic acid, natural cranberry flavour. They have a cute little asterisk next to the two acids saying "Don't worry, citric acid is just lemon juice and ascorbic acid is simply vitamin C. (we have to use the technical jargon to keep the food authorities happy!)". So it's nice that they think to explain what the acids are, but then why is the "cranberry" cola more than 50% grape juice? That's not sounding too pure to me, it wouldn't have been hard to call it "grape and cranberry juice" would it? Unsurprisingly, it doesn't taste much like cranberry juice and is rather bitter, but refreshing if you're looking for a fizzy drink that's not too sweet and not just water.
- I'm very doubtful that their hand-made lemon cake is at all hand-made, but I'm not very bothered if it tastes nice. Not particularly sweet nor (for the cake part) noticeably lemony, it's a bit heavy, but moist and filling. The top is the most interesting bit; it's been covered in coarse-grained sugar which has then had lemon juice sprinkled on it, which is a very nice and as you eat that suffuses through the rest of the fairly bland cake. So overall pretty good, might have it again.
