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Waitrose Easy to Cook Venison & Mushroom Wellington £11.99

Venison Wellington pack front

Food with Passion is very fond of a piece of venison. Game is generally very lean and a great addition to any diet being rich with minerals and full of flavour.

This wellington appealed on an evening when Food with Passion had little time to cook and with Venison bing a naturally Free-range meat, Food with Passion had no concern on the animal welfare front.

I will keep this review brief as there was little to commend this product. We followed the instructions to the letter, but when we got the individual wellingtons to the table (two portions), we were of one voice ..... this was a disastrous product.

1. The venison inside was bland and had clearly not been seared to lock in flavour. The pieces of venison were quite small and in our opinion were not of great quality. Venison should sing and occasionally be on the gamey side depending upon its treatment after slaughter. If this Venison was singing, then the notes were flat!

2. The pastry was soggy and water actually ran out from the wellington on the plate... a far cry from the promised crisp wellingtons ..... there was no sign of a bechamel (unusual in a wellington anyway) .....perhaps the mushroom pate had not been dried out sufficiently. It was unappetising and pretty much inedible in Food with Passion's opinion.

At a cost of £11.99 for two, this was a disgraceful meal and very poor value for money .... Food with Passion would not have given £1.00 per portion. let alone £6.00 a head; Food with Passion has had tastier sausage rolls than this at a darned sight less cost. Food with Passion will be landing soon at the Waitrose customer service desk asking for our money back.

Food with Passion's verdict: Don't buy this ..... a nightmare.

In the end, we were very sorry not to have had a simple fillet of venison available from Donald Rusell .... it would have cooked in half the time and been much more tasty .... see a Donald Russell review here.

UPDATE: Food with Passion returned to Waitrose and explained our dissatisfaction at paying a high price for a horrible product. We were surprised to be handed double our money back as part of Witrose's commitment to quality.

Whilst Food with Passion does not advocate abusing this generous (and unadvertised) refund process, I guess that it will hurt suppliers to have products returned if consumers don't just write off these bad experiences and ask for their money back. It will also raise the bar on quality for fear of product returns.

Note: this was not a case of a dish not being to Food with Passion's taste.... we cannot expect suppliers to legislate for that and we don't believe that you should ask for money back in those circumstances, but this was a poorly executed product inconsistent with the package description and poorly manufactured to boot

Food with Passion applauds Waitrose for putting their money where there mouth is.