There was a period of years when the only time I had time for lunch Monday through Friday was the Starbucks spinach, feta cheese and cage-free egg white wrap next door. The price was around $ 4, it felt reasonably healthy, and I could hold one end inside the paper bag and discreetly place it on my keyboard. I know that I am not alone; When you mention this summary in the conversation, a flurry of wise nods suggests that we’ve all made it through a harrowing Monday thanks to this Starbucks player.
However, after so many years, that utility is all you can try. The envelope ceases to become a saving grace; instead, it’s fully optimized, worth 290 calories of Hump Day fuel tucked into a whole-wheat wrap that is actually pretty dry – something becomes notoriously obvious when you take your eyes off your monitor to focus on what you’re chewing on. The other sandwiches on the Starbucks menu, meanwhile, simply don’t offer the same compact practicality: croissants are too crumbly to eat at your desk, turkey bacon is too rubbery to politely break with your teeth, and the other wraps are Too heavy, too caloric, and too expensive. But Starbucks finally has a menu item that could solve X, Y, and Z at the same time: the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich, made with a plant-based sausage patty from Impossible Foods, a cage-free fried egg, and aged cheddar cheese. ciabatta sliced bread.
Acquiring my newly reopened Starbucks neighborhood sandwich was an adventure in itself. What the Starbucks mobile app promised would be a six-minute transaction turned into a half-hour waiting game, and to be clear, that’s not the fault of the employees. Since mobile orders can no longer be taken directly from the counter (the full point of a mobile order), you have to bother someone halfway through your latte making to get your reward back. Also, it is no longer feasible for baristas to project the name out loud on the order to a café full of expectant customers. As more and more people came through the door, hitting their socially distant but ever closer marks, it didn’t occur to me that this would be the most unnecessary reason in the world to risk COVID.
Let’s talk about bread first. Ciabatta was the right choice here: it’s tough without being heavy, and not so firm that biting it will make the padding slide to the other end. He faces an enthusiastic bite, is what I’m saying. While the English muffin and whole wheat wrap on the other sandwiches feel like a functional exterior, the ciabatta tastes like something you might want to eat on your own. A good start!
Aged cheddar cheese and fried egg without a cage are elements with which we are already familiar; they are old Starbucks guardians. And why not? They add protein and weight to every menu item they are featured on, and while they could stand to have a bit more flavor (I’m not trying too old on this cheese), the color and texture never disappoint.
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Putting all of these together is the impossible breakfast sausage pie, and we must give all the credit to this meatless engineering marvel. The public has spoken and loves impossible foods, at least when it comes to meats, like ground beef and sausages, which can be reasonably exchanged for pressed vegetable protein. (Bacon and fillet, meanwhile, it might be more difficult to replicate.) When I picked up the sandwich patty and bit into it directly, I could feel the slight fluffiness that most vegetarian and vegan products give away, but the patty has managed to replicate the flavors of animal fat to a not disappointing degree: a few slightly salty and spicy notes offer a sufficient counterpoint to egg and cheese, whose torque would feel insufficient in the ciabatta without this patty in the mix.
There are downsides, of course: the bread gets a little chewy after the sandwich has been gone for more than 10 minutes, and the fluffiness of the patty becomes more apparent as it cools. Since it’s a product of Impossible Foods, it also comes at a higher cost: I paid over $ 5 after tax, which feels a bit pricey for something I can eat in some quick bites, though it’s not out of step with it. Starbucks price in general. It’s not a perfect sandwich, but if you bought it for lunch every day and mechanically ate it on your keyboard, it would take a long time to tire of it.
That’s the real genius of the Starbucks menu: each item comes close, but never passes, to its own sweet or salty threshold, which is still interesting. enough to keep you at the end of the line, but not so delicious or forgiving that you actively consider whether or not you should make your fourth order in a week. I’d probably get another one soon, but I’d rather keep my (social) distance right now. When I finally received my order and retired to relative safety outside, tired of relief, I was so hungry that I ate half of my Impossible Breakfast Sandwich before I remembered to take a photo.
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