Starbucks new Christmas additions – what’s worth trying on the festive menu

With a limited budget in the lead up to Christmas, I had to pick my Starbucks treats carefully. As the perfect stop-off during a festive holiday shop, my go-to – as always – is a lovely hot coffee.

This time I picked the Caramel Waffle Latte, which is finished with whipped cream and a crunchy topping.

Hitting the spot, I rated the Caramel Waffle Latte as a solid four out of five, missing out on the top mark because I would have liked more of the crunchy topping.

I paired the hot latte with the Festive Feast Panini, which is a filling of chicken and bacon with turkey gravy. The Festive Feast Panini also had pork, sage and onion stuffing, and cranberry chutney with Cheddar cheese.

In my opinion, however, the Festive Feast Panini was a disappointingly mediocre. While the meat was juicy, lavished in the turkey gravy flavouring, it needed something else.

Perhaps it could have benefitted from an extra juicy topping, to break up the overwhelming taste of turkey, and I could hardly taste the cheese – three out of five.

Trying ‘Tis The Season Sandwich at another time, I didn’t have high hopes but, in actual fact, this tasted better than the panini.

‘Tis The Season Sandwich has chicken breast, smoked bacon, spinach, mayonnaise and cranberry chutney with sage and onion stuffing in brown bread.

Now this had the juiciness that I was craving in the panini – I found ‘Tis The Season Sandwich to be creamy, juicy and tasty.

It’s for this reason that ‘Tis The Season Sandwich received a good mark of four out of five. The only reason it wouldn’t be given five stars is because of my bias preferring hot to cold food.

This is also the reason why I didn’t pick any of the cool refresher drinks to try – there’s Cran-Merry Orange Refresher, Cran-Merry Orange Lemonade Refresher and the Cran-Merry Drink.

Another hot drink – the Eggnog Latte – is considered a classic holiday favourite that is topped with nutmeg. While the latte tasted “really good” – a review from my taste-testing companion – there was also a mention of how sugary the drink is.

Despite there being “lots of sugar”, the Eggnog Latte received a solid four out of five.