Takeaway Truth: Subway Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt And Meatball Sub

Takeaway Truth is an occasional Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today: Subway’s Premium Chicken & Bacon Sub and Meatball Sub.

Fast food restaurants have been known to gild the lily when it comes to accurate depictions of their menu items. Far too often, the mouth-watering feast on the poster turns out to be a limp and oily morsel. In a bid to keep the fry-jockey overlords honest, we’ve decided to document the reality of fast food — it was either that, or go postal like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

It’s been a while since we last put Subway under the Takeaway Truth spotlight. Previously, we have looked at the Three Pepper Chicken, Steak & Bacon With Cheese and Lemon & Herb Sub — none of which fared particularly well (the top scoring sub received a modest 5/10).

The latest limited-edition item on Subway’s menu is the Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt which is part of the new ‘Premium Chicken’ rage. Subway describes the Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt as being “stuffed with melted Monterey cheddar cheese, tender all-white meat chicken, crispy bacon, lettuce, tomato, onions and green peppers.”

As always, we asked our Subway sandwich artist to make our sub look exactly like the image on the poster. Here’s how the finished product compared (note: the Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt is the sub on the poster’s top right).

She didn’t do a particularly good job, did she? I even swiveled the poster stand around so she could see it while preparing the sandwich. Tch, eh?

Truth Rating: 5/10

Another sub that we haven’t looked at yet is their staple menu item: the meatball sub. Subway’s advertising blurb for the meatball sub describes it thusly: “Italian style meatballs drenched in irresistible marinara sauce, served on freshly baked bread.”

Here’s how the real thing compares to the advertised image:

Nope.

Truth Rating: 4/10

Which fast food franchise or menu item would you like us to tackle next? Let us know in the comments section below.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


17 responses to “Takeaway Truth: Subway Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melt And Meatball Sub”