So the ever-changing food court stall by the washroom at Aberdeen's food court has now changed to Strike! This is the same Strike that is also at Garden City and Alderbridge where the self-carwash is and K-Mix, except this Strike specializes in sandwiches and wraps.
Personally I love sandwiches, so I was very interested to see just how good their sandwiches were, since that's all they sell here basically.
The look of the stall is very modern, with all menu boards being digital on 3 vertical screens. There's a large chalkboard-like display beneath it, showing the structure of their sandwiches. With such a display, one would think they would be experts at sandwiches, and that they should be uber delicious! They really hyped it up for me!
After browsing their menus, which swap from English to Chinese after a few seconds on each language, I decided to go with their Strike Signature Burger Patty Sandwich Meal $8.25. Seeing as it was named their "signature" sandwich, it should be their best one, so I had to give that a try. The meal version, which costs $3 more than just the sandwich, comes with a drink and your choice of fries or green salad. I chose an iced lemon tea and fries.
At first glance, this looks like an ok sandwich. It's a double layer sandwich with two ingredients in each side. The bread is toasted and looks pretty good. However, immediately you can see that this sandwich looks pretty dry. You don't see any spread or sauce dripping from it, let alone in it at all! When you bite into it, your fears are confirmed: this is one VERY dry sandwich. There might be a light layer of butter/margarine spread on the inside of each bread slice, but that's it! No other sauce or spread is anywhere to be found. I may love sandwiches, but if it's one thing I hate, it's a dry sandwich/burger. No matter how good you think your ingredients are, or how well the sandwich is put together, if the sandwich is dry, I'm going to have a bad dining experience. The burger patty is very thin as you can see in the photo, and there appears to be only one slice of tomato in the middle of this whole sandwich. What kind of sandwich uses only ONE slice of tomato in the middle? What about the rest of the surface area of the sandwich layer? The other veggie in this sandwich is shredded cucumbers instead of the expected lettuce. Sure cucumbers is a nice change, but lettuce would have helped provide more moisture in this sandwich, and the tiny amount of cucumbers could not carry the responsibility of providing enough moisture to offset the lack of spread/sauce. Overall this sandwich was horrible because of the hype it generated through its menu and displays, and could not even deliver a decent tasting sandwich! Jess makes sandwiches WAY better than this one on the regular, and that's not even an exaggeration!
To solve the dry sandwich problem, the next best solution would be to drink more of my drink per bite of sandwich. This however, proved to be a failure as well, because Strike could not even make a proper iced lemon tea! It's one of the simplest and most common drinks of Asian restaurants/food courts, so how could one go so wrong? There's no sweetener added whatsoever! Whether it be honey or sugar or syrup, whatever it is that usual places add to give it that sweet tasting flavour, Strike did none of that! It just tasted purely of cold tea. The lemons were not squished inside already like some places do, but that's not a big deal as I can do that myself with the straw. However, even after releasing the lemons' flavour into the drink, it's still far too bland to be helpful at all.
Lastly, the fries! At first the fries seemed to be ok. They were over-fried but seemed to be ok during the first few pieces. Later on, it was clear that these fries barely had any potato in them. Each piece is predominantly fried batter, and the bare flavour of the fries did not holdup well.
They seemed to be only using half of the stall so far, as the left side was quite empty, so maybe they're prepping for a more expanded menu? In any case, this was a horrible dining experience, and it is definitely a onetime place to try, just to see how bad the sandwiches are. The drink was bad, the fries were bad, and their main product, the sandwich, even their "signature" one, was atrocious! Maybe it's the curse of this stall to never have success, or maybe Strike is just that bad.
Food:
2/5
Price:
$
Overall:
2/5
Thanks for reading everyone! Try this place out if you dare, and let me know your opinion!
- Phil
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