Subway, if it wasn’t broken why did you try to fix it?

Manitoba is currently the test market for a new breakfast menu at subway restaurants. The minor addition is yogurt cups, but the two major items are meant to attract those arch-loving breakfast eaters to Subway: hashbrowns and no-cook eggs.

No cook eggs? Yes, no cook eggs. Before, Subway restaurants would have a single element device which they would cook liquid eggs on in a frying pan…just like mama would do. Now that’s a thing of the past. The eggs come in pre-cooked (similar to scrampled eggs at McDonalds from what I understand), which means that there’s less cooking time involved and faster service. From that perspective, its a good thing: if you had 4 people in line all wanting eggs, they were all waiting for the single pan to free up so the next order could be cooked. Fresh yes, fast no.

But from a quality point of view, the eggs are MUCH thinner than the freshly cooked eggs. They aren’t as fluffy either. One of the things I liked about Subway breakfasts was that it was close to the type of eggs that I would cook at home. That’s not the case anymore.

The second big addition to the menu is hashbrowns. Now, you might be thinking “how do they cook them without a deep fryer?!”. Well, a toaster oven has many, many uses. The hashbrowns are toasted in the convection toaster oven, which I was actually pretty happy about: toasted should mean crisp, dry…in a word, perfect. But perfection was not to be.

Taste wise, they’re seasoned very nicely. But for something cooked in a toaster oven, they’re greasier than Justice Gray’s hair after not washing it for three days (you need to understand the amount of hair gel this guy goes through). Instead of crisp, firm hashbrowns, they’re limpy and soggy. To boot, when I asked the Subway employee for ketchup packets she informed me they didn’t have any. How can you roll out hashbrowns without ketchup?!

So all in all, my breakfast routine might need to be changed somewhat. I still like that I can get a few servings of vegetables early in the morning, but the quality isn’t as good as the former breakfast offerings from Subway.

~Matrie De