Pret A Manger, 87-88 The Strand, London WC2. Meal for two, including wine and service: £45

There’s a story that in the decades following the Second World War, Reading in Berkshire was regularly judged the most typical town in Britain. As a result whenever there was a new traffic system that needed trialling – triple anti-clockwise mini-roundabouts, reactive traffic lights, annoying roadside signs with happy or sad faces triggered by your speed – it was introduced first in Reading. As a result Reading became the most atypical town in Britain. Well, this evening I am sitting in the Reading of the Pret A Manger sandwich shop chain, a branch on London’s Strand that has been given every possible bell and whistle for the trial of an evening waiter-service menu and is hence now entirely atypical.

The Pret star outside is black and silver, and there’s tiling to match at the far back of the shop. Behind the till a graphic-embossed screen has been pulled down welcoming you to the evening service, and a “host” stands by the door handing out menus clipped to boards. There are paper place mats, knives and forks – in a Pret! Oh my! – and even guttering candles. It’s all rather sweet, like the Year 6s have decided to be really grown up and run a restaurant in Mrs Wilson’s art room to raise money for charity. Look! They’ve printed out menus and everything, bless them.

My companion, flummoxed by the multiple branches nearby, loses her way and is a few minutes late. Orders are taken at the counter and then brought to you. I choose a £25 bottle of prosecco and sit drinking it alone staring out at the office workers hurrying home. These may be among the most depressing 10 minutes of my life. It strikes me that going to a branch of Pret A Manger for a classy night out of prosecco drinking is a bit like going to a brothel in search of true love. It could happen but, frankly, we all know it’s a victory of hope over expectation.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Pret, I really do. It’s easy to be down on this sort of high-street brand, but even easier to forget the impact Julian Metcalfe and Sinclair Beecham’s chain had on our eating habits from the late 80s onwards. They made good, fresh sandwiches readily available to the masses in a way they weren’t before. The mark of a country’s food culture doesn’t lie in the opening of a restaurant serving Pierre Koffmann’s delicate braised pig’s trotter, however wonderful it may be. It lies in the national availability of, say, a really good crayfish and mayo sarnie or a quality brownie at a fair price. Some people will regard this as sacrilege; I imagine the comments section below this review online are now like the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. But that doesn’t change the fact: Pret was a game changer in the casual high street lunch market.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Toothsome’: the brownie with ice cream. Photograph: Sophia Evans for The Observer

Sandwiches, salads and brownies are what they’re good at. On the wall is a sign which explains they decided to trial this evening service because their stores are “often quite busy at lunch but unusually quiet at dinner”. Unusually? There’s nothing unusual about that. Nobody wants a sandwich for dinner, unless the evening’s gone really badly. And I’m not sure they want this either. Within 100 metres of this Pret there’s a Zizzi, a Byron, a Leon and an Itsu, all of which make a better argument for separating you from your cash at this time of day.

Because the food is deeply underwhelming. Much of it has already been on offer up to six o’clock. Now they can charge you more for putting it on Pret-branded crockery and sprinkling it with chopped parsley. The menu divides between small plates, toasties, salads and “hot bowls” with a disastrous sideways move into macaroni cheese. Pret’s spicy meatballs, at £4.25 for a bunch of tightly packed spheres of indeterminate animal, set the tone by coming in a tooth-achingly sweet sauce. Too much of what we eat comes in a slop like this which has sacrificed grace or interest on the altar of sugar.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Tooth-tinglingly sweet’: the meatballs in sauce. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer

A plate of dips tastes like somebody hit the Tesco deli aisle and opened some pots, then went large on the pomegranate seeds. The “Lebanese” dip is an insult to a whole country. It is red and salty and dull. The “raita” could come from any number of culinary traditions, being simply yogurt with cucumber. The hummus is nasty, bland, tile grouting.

The hot dishes all come on the same “quinoa rice”, a charmless edible gravel clearly added to everything here to bulk it up. It’s there in a completely undressed salad of beetroot, butternut squash and feta. It’s there with a horrendously sweet cauliflower and sweet potato curry. Worst of all these is the “Korean BBQ pulled pork”. Shredded pig wallows miserably in a puddle of gloopy sugary redness, wondering what it did to deserve this. Through the window I can see Kimchee, a Korean restaurant, directly opposite. I dream about being in there. But I’m not. I’m here, at Pret A Manger, trying to have a good night out over an utterly inappropriate bottle of prosecco. As to the kale and cauliflower macaroni cheese, I genuinely do not understand how anybody in the food business can taste that and think it’s a good idea. It needs to be put in a burlap sack and drowned in the nearest canal.

So what’s OK? The salt beef toastie is OK. It’s not brilliant. The salt beef is cut thin and is too lean, but as a whole the sandwich isn’t bad, and the caper, rocket and tomato salad on the side is fresh and vibrant. At dessert there’s some broken biscuits with popcorn, caramelised nuts and some squirty cream, which I’m sure those Year 6s enjoyed putting together. The best thing is a warmed, squidgy brownie with a scoop of ice cream.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Worst of all’: Korean BBQ pulled pork. Photograph: Sophia Evans for The Observer

In summary, then, we went to Pret A Manger and had a nice sandwich, a pleasant salad and a toothsome brownie. Which is what we already know they do well. Still, the staff were friendly and engaged. But that makes it only a little sadder. Given the growing sophistication of the mid-market, they have simply under-thought the whole thing. Is it cheap? That sandwich is around £6, and the pulled pork around £7 so no, not really. You’ll end up looking at the bill and wondering whether this money could have been better spent. The answer, I’m afraid, is yes, in an awful lot of other places.

Jay’s news bites

■ Devising an offering that works into the evening on the high street is tough. The Belgian-born (now American-based) chain Le Pain Quotidien manages it better than most. The menu includes tartines, rough salads and larger items, such as chicken and leek pie or chilli. The dishes are a viable option as night falls. But it’s at its best at breakfast (lepainquotidien.co.uk).

■ Local doesn’t usually make much sense in urban areas, where farmland is a distance away. The branch of small café group The Department of Coffee and Social Affairs in St Martin’s Courtyard in London does have a genuinely local product: honey from the 150,000 bees living in the three hives on the roof. The 30ml taster jar is £1 (departmentofcoffee.com).

■ Pop-up burger people Yeahburger, currently at the Star of Kings in King’s Cross and Strongroom Bar in Shoreditch until 22 August, are replacing the bun with a bisected scotch egg for the Scotchness Monster. Wrong, on so many levels (@sayyeahburger).

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk

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