I tried the Thai first. It seems like everyone is playing this sauce off as Sweet Thai or Sweet Thai Chili, it’s almost everywhere.  I wonder if the sauce is the same bottle of Sweet chili sauce that I have at home. Either way, it’s good. So I first unwrapped the sandwich and it is pretty small, but then again it’s only $1.99. If you want to see how big it is, just look at one of the pictures in the gallery (I’m only 5’6″). All the sandwich is, is a breaded chicken strip, with some mayo, and the sweet chili sauce on a little “baguette”. The bread was pretty soft, and a bit toasted, but not crispy. I wonder if it would be better if it was toasted more and like a panini. The chicken wasn’t very crispy for the most part, because I guess the moisture from the sauces moistened it a bit. The outer edges still had a bit of crunch to it, and the chicken was really tender. It was pretty good. The mayo wasn’t very noticeable, and most of the flavour came from the chili sauce.

Next was the grilled pesto chicken McMini. When I opened it up, the piece of grilled chicken was susbstantially smaller than the other one it was almost an inch shorter than the piece of bread. I think I like the pesto one better. This is a pine nut-less pesto sauce to save their butts from people with nut allergies. It also has a mayo sauce. This chicken was a lot more tender and juicy, and better. It’s also probably healthier! The bread was the same, as in it was slightly toasted and browned but not crispy at all. It wasn’t too oily, and the pesto had a really good flavour, and you could taste the garlic but it didn’t have that raw garlic bite.

You don’t have to get the ones I ordered. You can mix and match grilled vs crunchy and thai vs pesto. I just tried these two combinations because I wasn’t that hungry, and I took the word of other Vancouver Food Bloggers.

Overall, is it a good value? I’d say it is at $2. It’s small, but it’s also like a snack. I like them better than the snack wraps, and I’m really getting sick of McDonald’s hamburgers. So at least these McMini’s will give me a reason to visit McDonald’s.

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I got some Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine Panini’s, the other day and finally decided to give it a try after my P90X Ab Ripper X workout and run. I was quite skeptical about it, because you are supposed to microwave these sandwiches for 3 minutes and they should turn out crispy like a panini. Do they? Just keep reading…

I opened the box, and there’s one open panini wrapped in plastic. The instructions are a bit weird, as you are supposed to use the box as a platform to use in the microwave. Anyways, instructions say you should let it sit out of the freezer for about 5-10 minutes before you microwave it. Take it out of the plastic, and there’s your panini sitting on a (patent pending) microwave tray. The panini is sitting there open faced, and you should center the two pieces on the tray before you microwave it. Put it in the microwave and heat it on high for 2 minutes and 45 seconds to 3 minutes and 15 seconds depending on your microwave. I did 3 minutes, then let it sit for about a minute.

The bread was kind of stuck on the microwave tray, so I had to use a spatula to get it off. The bread was brown, and slightly toasted. I’d say the crispiest part of the sandwich was the crust. It wasn’t soggy at all, but it wasn’t crispy like a panini should be, then again, it’s been microwaved. I guess the tray did a pretty good job. The panini had chicken, spinach, mushrooms, red peppers, and a blend of 3 cheeses (Parmesan, Romano and Asiago) and it made it very gooey. Every bite I took, I had cheese strings going from my mouth to the sandwich. The taste was pretty good. The chicken is pretty much on par with the type of chicken they serve you at Subway. And they had 3 delicious veggies that would go awesome in any panini. I’d probably eat it again if I needed a quick snack or was too lazy to cook.

Now onto the nutritional info. It has 7 g of fat, and 300 calories per panini. It’s 6 Weight Watcher points if you are wondering, and it is alo very high in calcium. Oh yah, I think I got it for $3 a box.

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I had my very first Vietnamese sub at Hen Long Market in Surrey, and their Vietnamese sub has been my favorite since then. I remember when these subs used to be $2.00 dollars each, and now they are $2.90 each. The 90 cents increase in price over 10 years is not bad at all, still really cheap for a sub.

They have 4 different kinds of Vietnamese subs, The Special Sub is the one you want to get. It’s got 3 kinds of Vietnamese ham, liver paté, cucumber, cilantro, pickled daikon, pickled carrots, hot pepper (optional), and mayo.

This sub, is so delicious. The ingredients are always fresh, they compliment each other so well, there isn’t a single ingredient in there that over powers the other. The picked daikon and carrots added a really nice acidic and sweet flavor to the sub, it’s one of my favorite parts about this sandwich.

The french bread is fresh, but not as fresh as Au Petité cafe‘s. I definitely like what Hen Long’s put in between the bread better.

I think the ultimate Vietnamese sub would be Au Petité Café’s fresh bread and Hen Long’s ingredients.

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Hen Long Market
14357-104th Ave
Surrey BC, Canada