With teens in tow, Katherine MacAlister gives very big thanks to the new-look Pret A Manger

Shopping is the new leisure activity, especially for teens who take an avid and enthusiastic part in this all encompassing sport, preferring to shop in herds, but dragging their long-suffering parents with them for their wallets alone when strictly necessary.

If you manage to avoid the aforementioned devotion to spending and materialism, then congratulations, but you sure as hell won’t get out of a trip to Bicester Village, Oxford’s own shopping mecca.

Adolescents love it there, clogging up Jack Wills and Superdry and wondering how to squeeze just a few more tenners out of their poor, despairing and broke parents while getting stuck into the people watching, which to give them their due is fascinating. Until you all you get to that point where even the shopping stops being fun and no one is able to make a decision, brave the crowds or trail around any more shops. Hunger sets in fast and tempers start fraying. Action needs to be taken.

Feeding them though is more of a challenge. For a start teens don’t want to sit down and eat steak and chips or a plate of spaghetti bolognaise and have to talk to their parents for an entire meal time, which rules out Carluccio’s, Busaba and Villandry. You can stand on the pavements paved with gold and order ice cream or pancakes, but parents like to sit down and rest their weary feet, or you can perch at Jamie’s feast van but only when it has space.

Which leaves Starbucks and Pret A Manger. As Starbucks hasn’t paid their tax I don’t see why I should give them what’s left of my hard-earned money, so Pret it was. Nabbing a table outside in the sunshine, I was surprised to see it had been fully refurbed since my last visit and as uber as ever, while maintaining a spacious interior and catering for hundreds of people at the same time.

Grabbing a basket – there were a lot of us – we started filling it with the enormous range of sandwiches, wraps, baguettes, flat breads, fruits and salads, all freshly made on site, and it was as if all our shopping traumas fell away, because Pret makes it so easy and the food is lovely, with fantastic choices which are all a bit of a treat and don’t break the bank.

Hauling our bounty up to the till to the beaming and helpful staff, lunch for five with drinks and snacks came to £22, and when you consider that one steak frite at Villandry is £21.95, it’s great value.

Sitting out in the sun we drank our probiotic vanilla yoghurts and vitamin volcano’s to rejuvenate and ate hoisin duck wraps and lebanese chicken flatbreads. The small cheese or ham sandwiches specially made for children are genius because although they would choose something more exotic they wouldn’t eat it.

My ‘award-winning’ avocado and fresh herb wrap was rather underwhelmingly seasoned but we were all happy and that alone was worth a thousand steaks. So thanks Pret – apart from locking my keys in the car, draining the battery and having to call the AA out, the rest of the day was a breeze.

Pret A Manger
Unit 450,
Pringle Drive, 
Bicester
020 7932 5269 pret.com

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