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I tried M&S’s £12 Gastropub dine in deal and it left me astounded
There’s just something about a Marks and Spencer’s dine in meal deal that gets customers all excited. For us, it always feels like something that is a real treat – but usually at over half the price of eating out or ordering in a takeaway.
The retailer hails itself as the ‘Home of Dine-in’ and often puts on various different dine-in deals for its customers to try based on the time of year. In fact, since 2008 the supermarket has sold an eye-popping 200 million of them.
This year it recently launched a £10 steak deal which went down a storm with shoppers as well as a roast dinner deal – also for £10.
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The Gastropub deal, promising restaurant quality food at home, has been a firm favourite at M&S since last year but we wanted to see if it had stood the test of time and was still a good option for a date night at home – without the restaurant price tag.
At first, the deal seems too good to be true. As you get the choice of a main, side plus a starter and a dessert to feed two people all for just £12. So when I went to grab the deal from my local M&S I was keen to see what dishes were on offer and if there was plenty of choice.
However, I needn’t have worried. I was actually quite astounded by just how much choice you had when it came to picking the Gastropub deal. Quite frankly , it’s impossible for you to not find something you fancy.
Some of the options for the main course included; lamb casserole, fish and chips, steak pie, chicken parmigiana, fish pie, cottage pie, shepherd’s pie and paella to name just a few. But they also had a choice of vegetarian options too including roasted aubergine and mac and cheese.
Side options included greens, potato dauphinoise, mashed potato and triple cooked chips. Then after all this you still have the choice of a wide range of either a starter or dessert too.
With all that choice we finally whittled it down to the lamb moussaka, triple cooked chips and sticky toffee pudding. We did have to buy a carton of custard to go along with the dessert, which was one downside, but other than that we were very happy with our choices.
Once we got back home we were eager to get the oven cranked up so we could put our £12 meal deal to the test. And after 40 minutes we were ready to tuck in after following the simple instructions.
One thing I couldn’t believe straight away when starting to dish up was the size of the portions. They were extremely generous for two people – and not something I had expected given we had only paid £12.
We both got a large portion of moussaka and triple cooked chips too. All dished up, we got stuck in. It’s fair to say that we were immediately impressed.
The moussaka was delicious with layers of lamb mince, thinly sliced potatoes, aubergine and a creamy bechamel sauce. It was delicious, rich and had a wonderful depth of flavour that felt like it had been slow cooked for hours.
The triple cooked chips were also perfect. They were crisp yet fluffy and not the least bit greasy and the perfect accompaniment to dipping in the moussaka sauce. Afterwards we were stuffed and had to leave a little space before we went in for dessert.
Once we were ready we stuck the sticky toffee puddings in the oven for 10 minutes and eagerly awaited them to be ready. It’s fair to say the smell coming out of the oven after 10 minutes was phenomenal.
The cake was perfect, light, and with the right amount of dates to give it that sticky toffee pudding texture. It was even topped with a salted caramel sauce as well as toffee and pecan pieces.
It was amazing and we both agreed that we were impressed that the dessert had come from a supermarket. Overall, we were really impressed with the deal. For £12 the portions were really generous and of really high quality.
We will definitely be considering having an M&S dine-in deal more often when planning our next date night in.
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