Subway Chicken Tikka

The Subway Chicken Tikka costs £7.39 and comes to 345 kcal in a six inch, and it carries the most protein of any classic sub on the menu. It is the most British thing Subway sells: tikka spiced chicken in a sandwich, a combination this country decided on decades ago and has never regretted.

The chicken comes marinated in tikka spices before it reaches the counter, so the flavour is built in rather than added. Everything else follows the usual script: bread, optional cheese, the free salad rail and a sauce, though this is one sub where plenty of people skip the sauce entirely because the marinade already did the job.

The taste is warmly spiced rather than hot: cumin, coriander and paprika territory, with the gentle tang the marinade leaves behind. The texture is tender chunks rather than slices, so it eats more like a filling than a cold cut. Toasted, the spices bloom and it is comfortably the most aromatic thing on the classics board.

It suits anyone ordering for flavour and protein at once, which is a rarer combination on menus than it should be. The catch is modest: the spicing, while mild, is present, so it is not the pick for plain eaters, and red onion plus a cooling sauce genuinely improves it rather than just decorating it.

Against its chicken siblings on the Sandwiches menu, the plain Chicken Breast is milder and firmer and the Rotisserie-Style is softer and lighter, both at the same price. Among the Signature subs, the Big Bombay is this sandwich taken to its logical conclusion with sauces and extras already chosen.

The value case is the protein figure at a mid range price: nothing on the classic board beats it. If your Subway order is fuel with standards, the tikka is the strongest argument the classics make.