Greggs’ Vegan Festive Bake is a worthy train treat

The holidays are generally a Bad Time™ for vegans and vegetarians—it’s all roast turkey, pigs in a blanket, and butter and cream galore. If your family is not acutely aware of your dietary needs and willing to accommodate, you’ll be stuck with a pretty bare plate. (“What do you mean you can’t have my famous bacon Brussels sprouts?”)

It warms my heart to see this nation’s great culinary institutions cater to us with seasonally appropriate alternatives. Perhaps the greatest of the United Kingdom’s food chains is Greggs, the venerated pastrymongers with 2,524 locations nationwide. Since the introduction of the vegan sausage roll in 2019, Greggs has steadily introduced more vegan menu items, including seasonal fare like the Vegan Festive Bake.

So it was a shock when Greggs declined to return the Vegan Festive Bake to pastry cabinets last year, instead introducing the Spicy Veg Curry Bake—a fine alternative, if not particularly Christmassy.

Hardcore Vegan Festive Bake fans were, of course, very chill about this.

Luckily, Greggs heard the pleas of the masses and magnanimously resurrected the Vegan Festive Bake this year with a “new and improved” recipe.

As your tireless vegan reporter, doggedly on the Greggs beat, I had to get the inside scoop on this year’s refined Vegan Festive Bake. So I grabbed my fedora, PRESS card tucked into the hatband, and journeyed to the local Greggs.

I wanted to go into my first Vegan Festive Bake experience completely blind, without knowing any of the ingredients. Were my taste buds refined enough that I could correctly identify the flavors inside that puff pastry? With each bite I took, a new flavor came to the forefront. First came cranberry, then a mysterious herb. It was only towards the end of my first Vegan Festive Bake that I got any sense of protein, a vaguely bird-like meat flavor.

I checked my findings against the official ingredients list. Greggs has filled this puff pastry with our old friend Quorn, sage and onion stuffing balls, vegan bacon (M.I.A. to my palette… is the vegan bacon in the room with us?), and 46% of your average adult’s reference intake of saturates, all topped with a cranberry and red onion sauce.

The flavors were rich and festive enough, but I don’t think the texture would remind you of your favorite holiday plate unless you typically eat your Christmas meal puréed. The Vegan Festive Bake was overwhelmingly mushy—even the solids felt ready to break down at the slightest breeze. But I swear it’s more appetizing than it sounds, and unlike the Mexican bake earlier this year, it was all self-contained—no soggy bottoms here. That’s good news for any vegan holiday travelers looking for a quick bite en route home for Christmas. There won’t be any creamy festive explosions all over your dress shirt on the train ride home.

All in all, the Vegan Festive Bake is a worthy seasonal menu item, but it’s not the Christmas gift that this vegan actually wants from Greggs: I want the permanent addition of the Vegan Steak Bake to the menu. You can keep your seasonal bake rotation, but for the love of Quorn, keep the Vegan Steak Bake out of it.

In the likely event that my Christmas wish does not come true, Night Water will be here next year, ready to bring you the unbridled truth about how the latest Greggs vegan bake tastes.