It’s always fun when the M&S development team unveil a genuine supermarket ‘first’, and this week’s Japan-inspired strawberries and cream sandwich lands deftly in the middle of a sunny June week flush with Glastonbury excitement and Wimbledon anticipation.
When it went on sale on Wednesday, the Limited Edition Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich instantly became the retailer’s best-selling sandwich and sold out everywhere.
That said, I’m rarely a fan of gimmicky products or anything that’s clearly been masterminded solely to go viral. TikTok foods are created to look great and sound novel and typically a little bonkers, but this often backfires when we get down to the eating.
Yes, this is a sweet sandwich, technically a dessert sandwich made from soft, slightly sweet and light-as-air white bread, filled with gently whipped cream cheese and layered with Red Diamond strawberries, grown specially for M&S for peak sweetness.
In Japan, this milk-enriched bread is known as ‘shokupan’, while the fruit sandwiches, or sandos, are known as ‘furutsu sando’. Like many of the Japanese foods loved around the world, presentation is key, and you’ll find the sandos layered with a variety of fruits including kiwis, grapes and citrus, sometimes cut into flower or star shapes, to maximise kawai aesthetics.
The M&S version certainly looks very pretty, with the sliced strawberry facing out of the fluffy filling, or ‘creme’, which is made from a combination of full-fat soft cheese and sweetened creme fraiche.
But, as ever, the proof is in the pudding. How does it taste? Downright delicious. If this had been served to me in a high-end patisserie, perhaps garnished with a few microherbs, I wouldn’t have questioned its origin.
I think one of the reasons it tastes so good is because the concept plays a trick on your brain. Even though you know what you’re about to eat, on some level, your grey matter is expecting a savoury sandwich, because of how it reads the presentation and packaging. When, instead, your senses of smell and taste meet a juicy, sweet reward, your pleasure receptors go into overdrive.
Even the experts agree. Makiko Sano, a Japanese cookbook author in the UK who posts on Instagram as @sushislim, wrote a review praising the M&S sando, giving it 10/10 but pointing out one small error with the viral strawberry and creme treat – in Japan, the crusts should always be cut off, whereas the M&S brioche-style bread does have crusts, albeit very soft and tasty ones.
The other three non-negotiables, according to Sano, are that the whipped cream shouldn’t be too sweet, the bread must be sweetened, and there should be a decent amount of fruit. On these counts, she says, M&S does well. “As a Japanese person who often eats fruit sandwiches in Japan, I loved it and finished it all without wanting to share with my children!”
It’s funny that she talks about sharing. Although the sandwiches were sold out in my local store, the manager kindly put two aside for me, and my husband stopped by to pick them up. After eating one to provide you with this review, I have another in the fridge. I have serious doubts it will still be there by the end of the school day.
Even though this is an undeniably sweet sandwich, don’t mistake it for cake. The brioche-like bread, while not savoury, contains far less sugar than cake sponge and will tear like bread rather than having the crumbly crumb quality we love in a good sponge.
Is it healthy? You should treat any fruit sando as you would a cake or dessert. It’s most definitely not a balanced meal to be eaten three times a day. It’s low on fibre, with just 1.5g per 100g – though let’s hope no health hackers get hold of the fruit sando and give it a makeover in seeded rye bread. There’s not much protein, either, at 5.4g per 100g.
However the overall fat and sugar content aren’t bad, with less than half the saturated fat found in an M&S Strawberry Victoria Sponge (5.2g compared to 11.5g) and far less sugar than its cakey cousin (7.1g to 26.5g).
It costs from £2.80, while luxury versions in Japan might cost five times as much.
If you miss out, try one of the Japanese bakeries that were selling fruit sandos long before M&S got in on the act. In Japan, they’ve been available in specialty cafés since the 1920s, and are now everywhere from convenience stores to vending machines. In the UK, Katsute 100 in Islington has a matcha strawberry shortcake sando, while at Happy Sky in west London you can buy authentic Japanese milk bread to create your own at home.