We always love trying foreign fast food. We had a great time sampling everything from Greggs! Let us know what your favorite Greggs product is so we can try it next time! There will be more videos from the UK and lots more British food. Don't miss the next video! Thanks for watching! - Brandon & Anja
Fair play to you two for doing such a comprehensive review. So you're fully entitled to comment on the entity that is Greggs. Literally two paces from my bus stop in Leeds, is a Greggs. Come the winter time, esp, it's very difficult to not nip in and scoff a pastie before the bus comes. Could murder one just now !!
We could go for another steak bake right about now! Would love to try a few more of em' next time we're in the UK. I (Brandon) love corned beef- so I'd love to try that one as well. We hope the next time we're there, we have a hotel with a microwave. I can imagine most of the things we tried would have been quite nice, if they were all hot and fresh.
I'm an American who lived in the UK for two years and still visit regularly, in fact I'm going back again in three weeks. The place I stay in Manchester has a Gregg's within walking distance and I always walk over for my favorite breakfast, two sausage rolls and a latte. Their steak bake is my other go to, it's really good. Great video, cheers.
That's the great thing about Greggs- there always seems to be one within walking distance! We love traveling the UK by train, and I think Gregg's seems like the perfect on the go train snack. We normally grab a meal deal at Boots before we travel- but trying such a larger variety has inspired me (Brandon) to switch it up and grab some Gregg's pastries next time. Thanks for watching!
There is no great mystery about bacon. There is back bacon or streaky bacon, which come from the loin or belly of the pig. In the uk we eat both, but back bacon is the one that we generally serve with breakfast and streaky (aka American bacon) is the one we wrap around sausages to make pigs in blankets or put on the top of the turkey for roasting. You can also get middle bacon which is both back and streaky all in one long rasher.
I have never had pigs in a blanket in the UK! Definitely need to try. In Canada, where I'm from, pigs in a blanket are a hotdog wrapped in a pastry. Something got clearly changed along the way when it was from overseas. 😅
@@dianasullivan3285 it’s a really interesting deep dive involving the US Government… Bacon in the USA is almost universally cut from the belly, which is why it is full of fat. ‘Canadian bacon’ as the USA calls it, is cut from the loin, but most Canadians actually eat US style belly fat bacon and Americans generally either confuse it with ham or with proper ‘back bacon’ as Brits would have. In Britain bacon is almost universally cut from the back, with a part of the loin attached, so it is a better cut than ‘Canadian bacon’, but US style belly fat bacon can be bought but is known as ‘streaky bacon’ because of all of the fat in it. The ‘Canadian bacon’ naming thing seems to have come from imports of Canadian meat to the USA in WW2, and also as part of Government intervention and protectionism of the naming conventions of bacon and ham. Bacon was given a huge marketing push in the 1920’s onward in the United States and if you fancy a weird food deep dive I’d say have a look into it.
not true Back Bacon is cut inn such a way it incorporates the same part Canadians use, the rounded part and the long thin part the bit we call streaky, the part Americans use, best of both, Canadian Bacon just has the rounded bit.
Greggs definitely has upped the quality over the last 10 years. Its still cheap and cheerful, but it definitely feels like they're putting in more effort these days.
I (Anja) remember the Greggs shops looked a bit different back then. Kind of white and basic. However, a lot of my university days are quite a haze since I spent a lot of my time in Scottish pubs back then 😂
If you're still in the UK, remember that Greggs has a regional menu. Google it and on Greggs website shows you what you can get and where. If you come to Newcastle, try a Peach Melba. They're amazing. Also try a full English breakfast in a stottie. Great video by the way.
Whaaaat! We definitely didn't know that. That's awesome. We're not on the UK anymore, but we'll be back for sure. We would love to make a Greggs round two. We've already had a bunch of suggestions for things we missed the first time around. Just looked up that peach dessert, and it looks amazing. We've never even heard of a stottie before. That also sounds good. We're already looking forward to going back! Thanks for watching. 🍻
I nearly forgot. The Magic Geekdom did a video in Newcastle and another RU-vidr did too. I'll find the latter for you. But they're well worth watching.
Yes, we loved Nottingham. We were surprised. We only really flew there because there was a cheap flight from Budapest but we don't regret it. We liked the cool old pubs (especially Ye Olde Salutation Inn) and all the ghost and Robin Hood stuff :)
So, you don’t like British back bacon! You do realise that what Americans call bacon we call streaky bacon and it’s the stuff, when I was young, you had for breakfast if you were poor and could not afford real bacon. These days it tends to be used in the UK to wrap around sausages for pigs in blankets or chopped up to add to other dishes to add to the flavour. You will get back bacon, by default, with a full English breakfast or in a bacon butty. To those who don’t know it’s a lot leaner than streaky, with less fat. We also mostly eat it ‘soft’ not hard and crispy, though you could prepare it that way. The streaky American stuff I find pretty much inedible for breakfast or in a roll.
I (Brandon) love back bacon, personally! I grew up with it - as "Canadian bacon" (as Americans would call it). I also grew up with peameal (wet cured back bacon rolled in cornmeal). Anja isn't as big of a fan. We love streaky bacon as well, but it can be quite salty, depending on the quality. And of course, a lot more fatty. Both are great though! I would love to try more back bacon in the future, in a less "fast food" type of setting.
As a seasoned traveller, on holiday I may collect a few condiments from pubs and not many, such as ketchup, mayonnaise, vinegar etc and it helps when dining on the street
It was surprisingly good! We would love to try more of the bakes in the future. They have a festive bake on right now, and we really want to try that! Guess we'll have to make sure we're in the UK near Christmas in the future. Haha.
It was pretty hard to pick and choose! Since we don't have a huge UK audience quite yet, we had no one to really ask what we should pick. We'd love to try some more of the bakes. If this video end up doing well, maybe we'll have to do a part two some day. There were so many things we didn't get to try! We'll make sure to try a cheese and onion next time. Haha.
Do you know Greggs in Newcastle (The home of Greggs) has a one month experimental pop up restaurant in Fenwick's the upper class department store . It's a high end fine dining restaurant , white tablecloths & serviettes , silverware etc . Imagine a Greggs meal served with Chablis or Champagne 🍾 It's proving very popular & requires you booking 😂
Nottingham, not changed at all since I lived there! Greggs are viewed by most people as basic. Growing up in Plymouth, the basic was a pasty. Looks like the Christmas market was being set up in the square when you were there. Hope you enjoyed your stay!
We were there at the end of September, so it was some other type of market but it was very cute. I can imagine the Christmas market must be very nice there as well 😊. Thanks for watching!
@@wherearewe-ytThe Christmas market in Nottingham is a sight to see! I remember going as a kid eating raclette scraped onto potatoes n silver skin onion ❤️
Hi 👋🏼 from the UK! 🇬🇧😊 I love watching these kind of videos, it’s always interesting hearing other people’s opinions on GREGGS and anyone not from the UK leaving reviews on our food 😊 Personally, I love GREGGS Pizza slices 🍕, GREGGS Yum Yums, their hot wedges, and their Apple juice… can’t beat GREGGS hot chocolate either! 😊 My partner lovessss their baguettes 🥖 Amazing video! Loved watching this 😊
We LOVE trying local fast food, snacks and local chains of the places we travel to in general. It's always exciting for us! Of course, we make sure to try a lot of local food as well. Maybe one day we'll make a second Greggs video. I feel like there are a lot of things we missed out on this first time around. A Yum Yum was on the list. Still sad we missed out! Anything else you would suggest? Thanks so much for watching!
@@wherearewe-yt I respect you for that! If you did make a second GREGGS video, make sure to jump straight on the Yum Yums 😋 they taste similar to a glazed donut but much nicer in my opinion 😊 of course everyone is different, but I highly recommend a Yum Yum! 😊 Would love to see you guys try more British food, maybe trying our crisps and drinks? Maybe a sit down video just taste testing? 😊 I will have to check out your videos very soon! But you’ve gained a subscriber and I love your content! 😊
I may even make a video trying American sweets 🇺🇸 for my channel as your video has given me inspiration and I love the fact that you’re both Canadian 🇨🇦😊
I love Gregg's! From what i can gather, meat/ savoury pastries aren't a huge thing in North America (esp. USA) like they are in the UK or Europe. So I'm always interested to see reactions to our classics lol
In Canada, where I'm from, the only savory pastry option that was a staple for me growing up was "pot pies". Savory meat pies that we always bought frozen, and cooked I'm the oven for dinner. There were certainly no sausage rolls or steak bakes for me growing up! Haha. We always love trying local food and snacks of each place we visit!
@@wherearewe-yt have you heard of Iceland ? it's a supermarket chain, as the name might suggest the majority of their stock is frozen they stock the Greggs products and slso TGI Friday and Harry Ramsden
How depressing that you can't distinguish between a very obvious joke, and a factual statement. 😜 We never said Greggs is a proper bakery. We're well aware it's a fast food chain. If you take a look at our channel, you'd see we've been all over the UK, and have tried food all over the UK as well.
@@wherearewe-yt no, generally people even in the UK think of Greggs as a bakery still, because it used to be one! The phenomenon of steak bakes, coffee, pizza etc is fairly recent. Back in the early 2000’s Greggs had started to transition from a bakers that made fresh bread on site etc into pure fast food, in the process they bought out rival bakers and rebranded them as Greggs, in my area it was Thurstons the bakers. I’m merely lamenting this, they used to bake great bread and cakes etc. Now they just reheat factory made products.
We've heard by many people that Gregg's used to be quite different back in the day. We would have loved to try it then! We haven't really had the opportunity to visit many local "mom and pop" types of shops yet in the UK - so we'd love to try some more freshly baked goods in the future. We're actually heading back to the UK shortly, so it's a goal of ours for sure! As much as we enjoy junk and fast food every now and then, nothing beats a proper bakery, with freshly baked goods.
If you're in the East Midlands it may be a cob rather than a roll, but if you are ever back in this area try Birds - their cobs and cakes are top tier!
As with a lot of food items, Greggs taste much better when they are hot. If you are not in a hurry, and you are willing to wait awhile, some, but not all outlets will bake you're requested item fresh for you(this may depend on how busy they are at the time)
In our second Gregg's video we ate at the restaurant, which certainly helped! It'd be a lot better if we had access to a microwave at home, but we typically stay in low-budget hotels. Haha.
We are back in the UK now, filming 8 new videos! We were going to film a short video where we tried a few of the frozen Gregg's products, but we ran out of time! We are trying to do a Gregg's part 2 video soon as well. Any suggestions??
Key with Greggs is getting everything fresh or hot. Why I wait for fresh batch in the oven. They just hit different if I’m eating on the road. If it’s to take back I don’t mind picking ones left a while to heat back up later on.
I can imagine! We had that one item made fresh for us, and it was one of the best things we had all day. If we didn't stay in crappy hotels without microwaves and ovens, we could have heat everything up ourselves! We still had a great time trying everything, regardless.
Yeah, Anja asked for red sauce for one of the other items that was made behind the counter. The vegan one was already wrapped up, so we just took it as is! Didn't realize it was totally dry, with nothing on it! 😅
At Greggs, whether your food is hot or not is a bit pot luck. The items are not kept heated, but baked fresh continuously throughout the day. It’s all to do with tax. If the food was kept hot it would be liable for more tax, therefore more expensive. Not often you get a ‘hot’ item that’s really cold though, because of the continuous baking.
They actually made one item at breakfast completely fresh for us, which was one of the best items! Honestly, it's partially our fault, having to take time to film and find somewhere to shoot. Though, as we said, if we had access to a microwave and could just heat everything up ourselves, I think almost everything we got would have been better! We don't even mind a cold pastry, but the more "bready" items like the pizza or the baji flatbread would certainly have improved, served hot. I've heard about that tax situation. Told that to Anja, and she thought I was full of it. 😂
We also have a supermarket here called Iceland and they sell Greggs official products that are frozen and uncooked. So you can have sausage rolls, steak bakes, chicken bakes etc at home whenever you want. You just cook them in the oven and they are ready in 15 mins or so. I also agree re the Steak bake (edited), it's the best thing on the menu by far
If we end up staying in the UK for a bit longer at some point, and actually have access to a kitchen, we will have to try them out! How do they compare?
@@wherearewe-yt the frozen ones are good, pretty much the same. You just need to cook them less time than it says on the box. Oh. I meant to say Steak Bakes are the best things on the menu above. Also, Greggs during Covid lockdown, posted the official steak bake and chicken bake recipes on their fb and X channels, so you can make them at home. Just google for the vids. The recipes are super simple. As long as you can get hold of Puff Pastry you could make them anywhere
@@overthewebb Aye it's cheaper in more ways than one mate, if it was the same price as the Gregg's shop stuff my criticism would be much greater, they also taste nothing like Gregg's stuff. That will be because Iceland use the cheapest ingredients, Gregg's do not.
Nice little review. Not over the top, broke each item down well. Greggs is where you would pop in for a to go breakfast and a lot of kids go at lunch time as its relatively cheap. Its very popular due to the price.
Welcome to Nottingham. It looks like you're on Victoria park. A famous boxer is buried in the old cemetery next door, Bendigo, his grave is a huge Lion on a plinth. Have a great time.
The bakeries (in Birmingham, West Midlands) were called Braggs back in the day, when I was a kid (62yrs old now), but in 1999, Greggs rebranded its one hundred Braggs shops as Greggs of the Midlands. When they renamed them, they no longer sold pineapple cream tarts, which, imo, were incredibly delicious. :(
Those sound delicious! We're headed back to the UK again soon, and plan on trying some more Greggs items in a new video. Also plan on trying out Wenzels. The desserts there look pretty good!
I'm Canadian (Brandon) and Anja is German. In Canada, some things are quite different, while others things are very similar! For example, being from the East Coast, I grew up with fish & chips. I grew up with roasts as well - but they often came with other ingredients for sides. Certainly not with Yorkshire puddings! I also grew up eating baked beans, corned/salt beef and things like that as well. A lot of the candy/ sweets I grew up with are actually British as well, since Cadbury and Maynards are also common brands in Canada. However, things like sausage rolls or bakes are not something I grew up with at all. It's funny..the more we explore the UK, the more similarities I end up finding. So many things I grew up with, that I never even released were from the UK.
Yes, Nottingham surprised us actually. We really liked all the super old and supposedly "haunted" pubs there 😊👻. We have another video where we explore Nottingham. Thanks for watching!
There is a weird tax law in Britain where food served without heating / reheating is tax free whereas if they keep it warm - they have to pay 20% tax so Greggs doesn't heat items it relies on frequent baking and a high turn over of items. If you turn up at the end of a batch you can get a cold and stale item.
That's what I had heard! I said that to Anja and she didn't believe me. We always stay in low budget hotels without ovens or microwaves, so we weren't able to heat anything up ourselves. I imagine most of the things we tried would have been ever better, had we had that option.
Have you tried the chicken selects from McDonald’s in the uk? Get the 5 selects meal with Smokey barbecue sauce and cream and chive they’re so good. Sweet chilli too
Yes! We actually referenced them in our other Gregg's video, after we tried Gregg's chicken goujons. We weren't filming when we tried the chicken selects, but they were so good. 🔥
Great vid. Next time (if you can) wait for sausage rolls that come straight out of the oven. They're napalm hot (so watch out... lol) but they taste soooo much better. Their Ploughman's Oval bite is very tasty too (they'll even put extra pickle in it if you ask. British Pickle and American Pickles are very different btw ;) ) Enjoy your travels ;)
Thanks! That sounds delicious. We tend to stay in small hotel rooms in the UK, so we are rarely able to reheat our food. I can imagine many of the items we had,would be better, had they been warm. That's why when we went back to Gregg's for the second time, we ate there. Made things a bit more fresh!
@@wherearewe-yt Dont go to the Arboretum in the rain or at night without a stab vest! Take plenty of money in case u decide to pick up a hooker or 2 while your there. Dont feed the pigeons, and be careful of the squirrels too - they're on to us!! Not too bad on a sunny day though! Oh, and get an ice cream from the shop round the corner cus theyre half the price for the same items compared to the hut on site!! FYI there are sooooo many nice places in the Uk, and the world even....... and u chose Nottingham!!! Crazy lol !! ( I live here in Notts, I like it really lol !! )
@@skibbadabba Hahaha. We really enjoy the UK! We live in a non-English speaking country, and have mostly lived and traveled in non-English speaking countries together the past 8 years. So going to the UK is like a nice little break for us. I suppose that's why we're not used to be people being able to understand the ridiculous things we say, like 20:24 lady in London. 🤔 We really enjoy checking out new cities in the UK, so if we have the opportunity to check out somewhere we've never been, we do it. 🍻
The first song is Dylan Sitts- Bouncing Back. (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V7C5STyrcG4.html) The second is Rebecca Mardal & Guustavv- Nested Above. (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ee00XrvqulU.html) We get all of our music through Epidemic Sound. We've got a sign-up link in the description of each video, if you need it!
Whether it's a roll a butty a bap a cob or something else entirely depends on where you're standing at the time. That's the reason for the old joke. In America you can drive for four hours and still be in the same state but in Britain if you drive for twenty minutes you'll find a different accent and a new name for bread.
It's true! Hahaha. It's going to take us both a while to keep track of all the British lingo. Especially as we travel different regions. That's what the comment section is for. But if we've learned something so far, it's that British people seem to love correcting others - including each other..so every video teaches us something! 😆
@@wherearewe-yt yes,Brutons are very few in the city but i think there is one in splott central cardiff..and maybe one in canton.thank you for the reply,and i do hope you manage to find a Brutons as i do believe you will love what they make.all the best on your travels.
You haven't truly experienced England unless you've been to Greggs 🤣🤣🤣. Brandon, my son, you sampled the best thing on the menu. I love Greggs pizza. A real damn shame your slice of pepperoni wasn't hot. Eat it hot and your smile stretches a mile 😁
Did you know why the reason why food isn't always hot at Greggs is the fact that they don't call themselves a hot bakery because with hot food they would have to charge tax on it. Therefore if you want your items to be hot such as the sausage rolls / bakes the best time is probably lunchtime or a busy time when demand is there so they'll be heating a fresh batch of bakes etc regularly.
So we've heard! We wouldn't even mind if we had a place to heat things up ourselves. With all the filming and whatnot, it's our own fault that things end up getting cooler. We have a Gregg's part two coming up - but this time the location we were at had two floors, so we were able to eat everything the moment we got it!
@wherearewe-yt yeah it's pretty overlooked with Greggs being much more popular, it's near enough the same menu but with a bit more variety and better food quality
I miss when greggs used to be a real bakery and you would see them making it all in te back. You could buy fresh cobs etc. different pasties. Now irs like school dinner.
Would Greggs take off across the pond? Would Americans buy Greggs products like Chicken bakes, stake bakes (my personal favourites) custard filled donut.
I'm not sure, since a lot of the products are pretty unfamiliar to North Americans! In Canada, where I'm from, I grew up eating "pot pies", which have SOME similarities to the bakes found at Greggs. Many of the other items, like the sandwiches, baguettes or wraps would be well. Sausage Rolls also aren't really a thing where I'm from, but people would like them if they'd try em'. I wish they would open one! There are so many Tim Hortons in the UK now, so it would be interesting to see a UK chain like Greggs come to Canada.
Haha, I had to look up who that is 😂. Considering she's almost 30 years older than me, I hope I look more like her daughter 😅. At least she looks quite young for her age 🙃😆.
It seems like they're called something different all over the UK! We were just in Northern Ireland, and it was a bap there. Makes it much more confusing for us foreigners..hahaha.
We have a second Gregg's video coming out in a month or so! We didn't try the vegan Mexican bake, but we did try the vegan steak bake the second time around. Pretty interesting!
They have a lot of frozen products available now, at least! We are hoping to try some when we're back in the UK in March. Interested to see how they compare.
😂 We will actually be in the UK for about two weeks in March, so we will check out some more local bakeries while we are there. Though we do plan on having a Gregg's Part 2. 🤓
We only got our breakfast from that one at the market square. Our lunch order we got from a different one. Our intro was filmed in front a third one because there was someone playing music too loud right next the place we got our lunch from. There is literally a Greggs every 5min in Nottingham, though 😂
We haven't lived in Canada for several years, so I barely even remember to be fair! It's changed quite a bit. The menu in the UK seems quite different. There's definitely no burgers or things like that in Canada. We're actually headed back to Canada soon, and we're going to make a Timmies video. We may try to make one in the UK before he head there as well, to compare.
We have a Gregg's part video coming out in a couple weeks, where we tried a bunch of items we missed the first time -including the cheese and onion pasty, AND the bean and cheese! 😁
Relax Jill, it was a joke.😂 If you actually take a second to look at our channel, you will see we have multiple videos around the UK with restaurant food.
All bacon comes from a pig, so how can you have streaky in one country and back bacon in another, it's all one and they separate it, they must delivery streaky to usa and back bacon to Canada 😂 in UK we have choice of both. I like smoked streaky and back bacon
Names of things often change, depending on where you are in the world! Sometimes things must just get lost in translation along the way. I'll take bacon in any form you give me. Always delicious! Haha.
Their hot sauce is 😋 I think a lot of their savoury food isn’t great just cheap and you get what you pay for but the desserts are nice and the hot drinks are ok
Anja forgot to order our second dessert the first time around. We are going to do a round two when we are back in the UK, which will definitely include more desserts! We may actually be there around Easter, so we will likely get to feature some Easter Gregg's items as well. 😃
those are more of a wendy's hash brown, there are one or two others that also use the same hash brown also, i think maybe even a and w, may use them..............
@@wherearewe-yt they are also available in stores like metro, price choppers, and costco, i dont have enough oil to fry them so i just bake them for about 10 min @ 450, if they dont have a light caramelizing, you can leave them in for longer, then try dipping them into various things like balsamic and olive oil, tartar sauce, you can also go in the other direction, and use things like clotted cream, blue cheese, jams and preserves, you can add them as a cheeky joke with a charcuterie plater, if you find them in a michelin cafe, you have hit the height of mediocrity, but if you find them in an oil branch then you found the order of fine dinning, 😜😜😜😜😜😜
I have never had a Gregs, i am waiting for my passport to be ramoved. The best Hot Chocolates in the UK is what you get on a train or in Hospitals, thank you NHS. I'v been on many trains so i know there HC, i have also stayed in many Hospitals in many wards, so i know.
I hope we don't over find out if that's true! We're sorry to hear that, though! Never? That's nuts...considering there seems to be a Gegg's on every corner in the UK. 😅
The vegan sausage roll is surprisingly good and you wouldn't know it wasn't meat. Maybe a slightly softer texture. However...check the salt content! I stopped eating them. Steak bakes are awesome.
It's not bad at all! I can imagine we'd recoil looking at most of the nutritional content of the things we tried - but it was still worth it. Hahaha. We're going to be doing a round two, soon!
I am one of the few people in the U.K who doesn't like Greggs. I have been there early in the morning not long after they have opened and the food was freezing. I prefer the Pound Bakery.
We've never had Pound Bakery. Seems it's more something in the North West, by the looks of the location? We'll have to check it out when we make it back to that area!
@@wherearewe-yt I live in North East wales very close to North West England, almost on the border so makes sense that it’s there. Never been to the south of England so I didn’t know it wasn’t there. The pasties used to be 2 for £1 but, like everything else, the price has gone up but still cheaper than Greggs. They do similar stuff though but it’s always hot
I don't get the hype with Greggs, I find family run bakers to be much better quality and better value for money. I'm not sure I've ever actually had something hot from Greggs as it always barely warm, and the amount of steak in the steak bakes seems to be getting less and less each time I get one
I had heard so much about Gregg's (both positive and negative) that I had to try it for myself! As we said in the video, Anja lived in the UK for 5 years, and she had memories of Gregg's that were similar to the way you described it. She was pleasantly surprised this time around because it was better than she had remembered. We'd love to try some more local, family run types of bakeries in the future. We tried some Cornish pasties from a local place in Exeter, and they were some of the best baked goods we had in the UK!
