England’s secret supermarket | Taste testing the best food in England
When I filmed a wander around Faversham, people kept asking whether I’d been to Macknade. I hadn’t. I didn’t even know what it was. Some people I spoke to were equally unfamiliar with it, while others thought it was the best part of town. That was enough to send me back for a look, and for lunch.
In this 2021 account, I went to the food hall, bought a few things and tasted them at home the following day. I loved trying food I hadn’t seen or eaten before, but I also had a budget. Meat, pastry and cider were where I decided to spend it. The expensive Scotch egg turned out to be a very good choice.
Lunch first, tasting later
My partner and I had lunch outside. I had a pulled-pork burger, he had a Korean burger, and we shared Parmesan fries. It was so tasty. By the time we got home, I was too sweaty to bring myself to film the rest of the tasting, so that waited until the next day. English summer had supplied plenty of sweat.
The food hall wasn’t huge, but there was a lot of different food to look at. I thought it was expensive, and I didn’t go completely mad buying things. I picked a Cumberland Scotch egg, a Kentish farmhouse pie and a bottle of cider. I also bought supermarket versions of the egg and pie to give myself something to compare them with.
The Scotch egg worth treating myself to
The Macknade Scotch egg cost me £3.25. For comparison, I bought a Tesco Finest Scotch egg that I thought cost about £1.30, although I said I needed to double-check that price. Those were the amounts in my 2021 account. The two eggs were a comparable size, so there was quite a difference in what I had paid.
For anybody who hasn’t had a Scotch egg, the version I was describing was a whole egg surrounded by meat with a crumb coating outside. The Macknade one was labelled as a Cumberland soft-yolk Scotch egg. I tried biting into it and couldn’t reach the middle, so I cut it open. That gave me a much better look at the egg and its thick coating.
It was delicious. The egg, the pork around it and the outside coating all looked and tasted good to me. Was it worth more than three pounds? As a treat, yes. I actually enjoyed eating it. That was the important distinction when I put it alongside the cheaper one.
The Tesco version had a hard-boiled egg and pork I found spongy. I wasn’t impressed with the colour of the egg, and after tasting it I thought the egg let it down. It was okay, especially for the price I remembered, but fairly bland. My verdict was that it would work in a pinch, while Macknade’s was an expensive but delicious treat.
A pie much bigger than I intended
At the counter, I’d also spotted the Kentish farmhouse pie. The description said it contained pork sausage and bacon, which sounded excellent to me. When I asked for some, the woman picked up one of the pieces that had already been cut. I agreed to it, and only when she handed it over did I realise quite how much pie I’d bought.
That piece cost £4.87, and it was enormous. I hadn’t intended to get such a big portion. The meat looked beautiful, and the outside was proper pastry. When I tasted it, I thought it was fabulous: salty, creamy, meaty and full of flavour. It tasted fresh to me, and I was very happy with it.
I’d chosen a Tesco Melton Mowbray pork pie as a rough comparison because both involved meat inside pastry. They weren’t the same product. The supermarket pie looked a bit like a hockey puck, and I found its filling grey. It tasted fine, but after the farmhouse pie it seemed much less appealing than I remembered that sort of pie being.
I still recognised the supermarket version’s advantages: it was inexpensive and easy to find if I had a craving. The farmhouse pie was a treat, and I had bought far more than a single-person serving. It was expensive enough that I didn’t expect to have another for quite a while, but I was very glad I’d tried it.
Cider and a reason to return
There were plenty of interesting-looking ciders, but I bought one bottle. I nearly chose an elderflower version purely because it had a wizard on the label, then decided to try the original instead. I thought it was tasty, smooth, easy to drink and neither too dry nor too bitter. That was another purchase I enjoyed.
Macknade had given me a wonderful lunch and some food I was genuinely excited to eat. We’d also bought apples, which were tasty too. I wanted to go back in a month or two and try a couple of different things. I couldn’t afford to buy everything that caught my eye, but the Scotch egg and huge piece of pie made this visit a very good treat.
No Comments