Restaurant chains and supermarkets have long been putting out mad Christmas food in the name of seasonality. Cynics would say these businesses are merely cashing in — and they’d be right.
This year appears more outrageous than the last. Where innovation might have been, madness has arrived, but this isn’t to say they aren’t good eating. We tried five of the maddest-sounding Christmas dishes of 2025. It was a little hit and miss…
Pasta Evangelists’ pigs-in-blankets ravioli
Pasta Evangelists
JB: The press announcement billed this dish as more interesting than it turned out to be. I was expecting floppy sheets of ravioli under actual pigs-in-blankets and fried sage leaves. It would’ve been mad, novel, trivial — a little Christmas silliness, maybe. What arrived in the monstrous confines of Harrods’ depressing dining hall was pork ravioli covered in guanciale and a little butter, butter reminiscent of cheap, greasy margarine. Otherwise, the dish wasn’t particularly offensive or unpleasant, simply pork meat ravioli with a scattering of crisp guanciale. But I wouldn’t rush back for it, not least because it costs £36. Not a typo.
DE: Harrods at Christmas is fairly hellish at the best of times — it heaves with stressed assistants and curious tourists, with damp-coated businessmen desperately wracking their brains to remember anything their wife likes (ditto the mistress). The food hall, though, is often an enclave of festive refuge, with its beautiful tiles and decorations, with the sweet smell of marzipan fruits and florentines. A novelty dish like this should be beneath the place. Still, it’s not, and here is the attempt to cash in on the endlessly upward popularity of pigs-in-blankets. The problem with this dish is that, though the idea has been committed to, the execution hasn’t. It’s just sausage meat ravioli, not bad but boring. Any cranberries were thoroughly hidden, and truthfully, if the odd idea of pigs-in-blankets pasta did appeal, this would disappoint. Oily as anything, too. Otherwise, not dreadful — apart from the price.
Papa John’s Yorkshire pudding Christmas dinner ‘pizza’
Papa John’s
JB: This was unfathomably disgusting. A soggy Yorkshire pudding, oily as the hair of a 1920s mobster, topped with dry turkey, chunks of diabolical sausage meat, strips of flabby bacon, tater tots and cheese. It was an oozing mess; an outrageous crime against food. I had a single mouthful and threw the rest of my slice away, though I did pick off the tater tots to softly assuage my sad hunger. Cannot recommend, even if it’s only £8.
DE: This cannot be anything but a drunken conversation come to life, possibly under duress. Surely, it cannot have been created to meet consumer demand? Has anyone been asking for pizza dough to be replaced with batter? Curiously, though it truly was dreadful, there was something oddly compelling about it, in much the same way drivers passing a crash slow to gawp. That said, with its heady mix of fat and oil, I can imagine it serving the dangerously hungover quite well. Something for the morning after a particularly diabolical office Christmas bash.
Sandwich Sandwich’s Christmas stack
Sandwich Sandwich
JB: There was a lot of talk when Sandwich Sandwich launched in London. Queues stretched around multiple blocks and the police were called at one point, such was the frenzy. The sandwiches are made as much for Instagram as they are for lunch. Credit where credit’s due, the place is a Bristol success story — it isn’t any wonder more shops have opened and more are on the way. As for the Christmas sandwich, it’s a decent thing, constructed in the shop’s house style: a neatly layered doorstop generously filled in white bread. Here we have turkey breast, shredded thigh, slices of gammon and a herby stuffing. Pleasing was the modest amount of cranberry sauce — I don’t like too much, if any. My only gripe? Crispy onions. These must be banished from casual food culture in 2026.
DE: For those able to unhinge their jaws, this should be a hit. It is a monster, a skyscraper of bread and Christmas filling, and not the sort of thing that can be consumed with any dignity. Not a terrible sandwich but hardly life-affirming either: the shredded thigh dominated until the salt of the gammon took over. Stuffing worked nicely, as did the sweet touch from the cranberry sauce, but in the end I could only manage one half before I began to feel a little sick. Probably better than anything else on this page, but that is not the ringing endorsement it might be.
Wagamama’s cranberry katsu curry
Wagamama
JB: I don’t tend to frequent Wagamama. It’s in the category of somewhere tolerable in an airport but otherwise I can’t see the point. Not in London at least, where there are an uncountable number of better options. That being said, the katsu curry is probably the most acceptable dish at the chain. Fried chicken and curry sauce, can’t go wrong, surely? It’s a dish that lends itself to mass production. But adding cranberries to the whole thing is very wrong indeed. Just too sweet. Also, the chicken didn’t travel well, though that might be down to the delivery time. Still, after pouring three sachets of chilli oil onto everything, I managed about a third post-gym, which is more than all the other dishes in this list bar the Christmas sandwich above.
DE: I made it through one bite before googling Black Friday deals for Dignitas.
Sainsbury’s mince pie brioche-style wrap
Sainsbury’s
JB: The less said about this, the better. What a mess.
DE: I not only fail to understand who this is for, but also when they would eat it. Is this intended for lunch? Afternoon tea? Midnight snack? Mince pies are fine with a cup of tea, or maybe a mulled wine (if you must). But mince pies are not the size of this wrap: this wrap is the equivalent of having about six of them on the trot, and who does that? It’s listed as a meal deal main, but is full of caramel. Is anyone having a BLT and thinking: “tell you what this needs — a load of melted sugar on top!”
Then there is the worrying description: “crème fraîche, mincemeat style compote, salted caramel sauce and shortcake biscuit pieces in a brioche style tortilla wrap”. Do you see the problem? “Style” seems to be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. Is it mincemeat or not? Is it brioche or not? It is perturbingly unclear. This has been the year of the novelty sandwich; may 2026 do better.
