Tis the Season for Holiday Tie-Ins

I’m not going to try and defend Subway. I think there was a time, way back in the day, where someone could have called the restaurant chain “decent”. We’re past that point, both because the quality of Subway’s food has been on a steady decline for at least two decades now, and also because there are so many other sandwich places with better ingredients that one could go to. Even if you can’t find a Quiznos (which I loved, but which are now a rarity) there’s Jersey Mike’s, Jimmy Johns, Potbelly, and a whole ton more. If you live in a halfway decently sized area you will likely not lack for sandwich options.

The one thing that Subway has over many of its competitors (which is also something Quiznos had, and which is why I miss them) is flavor options. Sure, every place is going to have lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard, and mayo, along with likely some salt and black pepper, but Subway has a whole huge selection of veggies and sauces they can put on their subs. I don’t think the subs are as high quality but I do love being able to go into one of the chain’s many places and make all kinds of flavor combos that I just can’t do anywhere else. If Jimmy Johns or Jersey Mike’s had half the sauce options of Subway, I’d never go back to Subway. That’s what I need on my sandwich.

Recently I was in the mood for a sub, not feeling like grabbing a burger or something deep fried, which led me to the quandary of either going to Subway for inferior food with good flavored sauce or Jersey Mike’s for a blander sub of better quality (seriously, I find Jersey Mike’s subs to be so boring). I ended up choosing Subway, and when I got there I saw something interesting on the menu: holiday selections including a Festive Turkey sub. Being the kind of person that will try just about anything once (since, at the very minimum, it gives me a chance to write a review), I ordered up a footlong Festive Turkey just to see what it was like.

The Festive Turkey is, well, a Turkey sub but more “festive”. It’s a basic Turkey, so you get the sliced turkey deli meat, topped with whatever you want along with the “festive” ingredients of stuffing a cranberry sauce. Of note, I could have also gone with a TurHamKen, which is sliced deli turkey, sliced deli ham, and rotisserie-style chicken. They also apparently have a Festive Chicken sandwich, although that wasn’t advertised at the store I went to. I went with the basic turkey both because the TurHamKen sounded like too much meat for one sandwich, but also because I don’t really like the Subway rotisserie-style chicken. I find it fatty and gross. The turkey, on its own, sounded better.

I did sample each of the new festive ingredients before biting into the full sandwich, just to see what I was getting into. The stuffing tastes like any basic stuffing you’d get out of a box, like a Stovetop Chicken stuffing. The lady behind the counter who made my sub (aka, the “Sandwich Artist”) even commented, “it smells just like stuffing,” which I can confirm. She served it out in scoops, a la how they serve the tuna and other “wet” ingredients, and then pushed it around with the scoop. It didn’t really spread so much as mushed the piles around, but it did make it easy to pull out a glob and taste. And yep, Stovetop (or some off-brand version).

The Cranberry Sauce was more interesting. I want to say it’s just a rerelease of their Cranberry Vinaigrette, which they’ve had in years past around this time of year. It’s good, with a light tang that balances the sour of the cranberry with the vinegar bite of the dressing. The lady behind the counter said she didn’t like it because it was too sour and didn’t taste like the “proper” sauce you’d get out of a can, but for a sandwich like this, I actually felt like this version of sauce was just right.

And for those wondering, I got the footlong turkey served on wheat, toasted but with no cheese, stuffing and sauce, plus lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, and onions. I wanted veggies that felt like they’d play nice with the concept of a “turkey dinner on a bun”, which this was, in effect, doing. No pickles, hot peppers, or other items I’d usually get if I was making a spicy chicken sub or a steak-wich of some kind.

Getting the sub home (because I prefer to eat in the comfort of my own house) I bit in and, well, mostly just got cranberry and stuffing. The issue with scooping in globs of stuffing and then mashing it into the bread is that it really doesn’t spread at all. All the stuffing sat on one side of the bun, while most of the ingredients slid to the other side, meaning I had bites full of stuffing and sauce and other bites that were more just turkey and veggies. I don’t tend to think the Subway turkey is absolutely bursting with flavor to begin with, so this created a very imbalance flavor profile for the sandwich.

Legitimately I think the stuffing would be better if it were portioned out as flatter layers on parchment paper. Yes, that would require more sidework on the part of the employees to prepare all that, but then the stuffing would be well apportioned when it came time to place it on the bun, just slide it on and remove the paper after. Certainly that would create a smoother eating experience than I got as, in those moments where I ate turkey, stuffing, veggies, and sauce all at once I totally got what the sandwich was going for. It’s like a leftover turkey sandwich, kind of like what you’d make the day after Thanksgiving, just, instead, you got it beforehand and from Subway. It wasn’t bad, when you got it all right… but clearly getting things right is something Subway struggles with.

More amusing to me, in fact, was when I ate half my sub the next day. It was a big sub and all the stuffing made it heavy (and salty, but in an expected way), so I could only eat half for lunch one day and save the other for breakfast the next. Then I had what I called a “leftover leftover turkey sandwich sandwich”. It held up well, I think in large part because the stuffing is the kind of ingredient that sits well for long periods of time. It doesn’t make the bread soggy, and it reheats well, so having it again the next day proved to be totally viable. Additionally, the cranberry sauce, being a vinaigrette, also reheated well. Mayo can get weird when you warm it up, but this light and tangy sauce showed no issues. I know most people aren’t likely to reheat their sub later, but if you had this, this one would hold up well to it.

All things considered I wouldn’t call this a great sandwich, but it certainly wasn’t a bad one. I think I kind of get what Subway was going for both with the flavor profile and how this slots in among all their usual ingredients. I actually think, despite my own reluctance, that this set of ingredients, sauce and stuffing, would likely hold up well in TurHamKen form, with the extra meat balancing out all the thick stuffing. But that’s also not something I have interest in trying, so I’ll leave that to you, the readers.

As for me, this was a fun experiment, but I don’t think I’d order it again. I prefer my spicy chickens or my southwest steaks. I’m glad I sampled it, as it was fun, but this didn’t wow me enough to really want to go back. At least, not until some form of it appears again next year. Then as just a once a year thing… maybe.