You know I love my breakfast food, and anything that is toasted that has ham and cheese in it.

Recently when we were out filming we stopped off at a place called “The Picnic Deli” in Killyleagh. They have an amazing choice of breakfast food. I tried the ham and cheese on French toast with dijon mustard. It was quite the breakfast experience – delicious although filling and probably full of an amazing amount of calories.

I have decided to create a catgeory for ham’n'cheese so you can follow my quest for the best ham and cheese toasted sandwich in Northern Ireland – you can find all the related posts by clicking on Departments above so you can see which I rate highly. I would give this one four out of five stars. It was just a bit too filling for me!

If you are passing by Killyleagh, which is in County Down, you should definitely pop into the Picnic Deli. They have a wide range of other delicious sounding breakfast snacks, and what’s more, every one of their waitresses is extremely attractive!

As part of my semi-regular reviews of ham and cheese toasted sandwiches, may I present this. It is from Deane’s Deli in Belfast. I have been there before, but the last time I ordered this it strangely came without being toasted, so I could not review it.

This time however, it did come toasted! It is on French bread, which I take it to mean something to do with eggs. Thus it is not very healthy, but it is delicious. The ham and cheese both seemed of good quality, and addition, the surprise appearance of fries was not unwelcome.

My only negative view on this sandwich experience was that the bread was perhaps too thick. Starbucks still rules in my experience for their Croque Monsieur paninis, but this is probably a close second. Hooray!

Feast your eyes on that beauty! At the weekend, my family and I had lunch in a brilliant place called Coffee Yard in Holywood. It is really, really nice, and I would go back there regularly if I didn’t live miles away.

Anyway, they had ham and cheese toasted sandwiches on sale, so as regular readers of this blog will know, I had to check it out in my quest to find the ultimate.

It looked, very, very promising. However, it seemed a bit dry, as there was no melted cheese from what I could tell actually in the sandwich. It was on top of the bread instead and hard as a rock once cooked. I must point out to be fair to Coffee Yard though that what seemed dry to me may not appear as such to someone who is not suffering from a monumental hangover after drinking three glasses of wine and numerous beers the night before.

I recommend Coffee Yard anyway – there has obviously been a lot of thought into the design of the place too.

I LOVE ham and cheese toasted sandwiches. To me it is a match made in heaven. Ham, cheese and bread. Delicious. If ever I spot a ham and cheese toasted sandwich someplace I haven’t seen one before, I will usually give it a go in my search for the ultimate one.

Currently, Starbucks does the trick with their Croque Monsieur panini – it’s the cunning addition of bechamel sauce and mustard that does it (not nearly as disgusting as it sounds). Prior to that Clements held the title in my mind, but unfortunately they stopped doing them. Boo. However! In Marks and Spencer the other week, my mate Jill and I caught the variation above on sale at their in-store cafe, Café Revive, while we were walking past.

Duly noted, we decided to return and sample it at some point. That day was today.

Note the tempting bubbled cheese on top. The cripsy crusts. Surely, this would beat Starbucks?

In a word, no – it was extremely disappointing. Because the bread was still just bread – it was not toasted. And you could hardly taste the ham. So while it may look the part, my quest continues! Insert dramatic music here!