It was in Glasgow that I first spotted the new “hipster” Greggs, with its walls of fake brick, its moody black-and-white pics and repro industrial light-fittings. It was also in Glasgow, much earlier, that I cultivated a weekly Greggs cheese and onion pasty habit, a tendency my thighs have yet to recover from. But it’s a long, long time since I have darkened the doors of the place.

Now the chain is further upping its, er, cool credentials with the launch of new, healthier sourdough “bakes”– two thirds less fat than their traditional pasties. They are being marketed as “Balanced Choice Bakes” – “Bet you never thought you’d hear that!!” gasps the website breathlessly. All very commendable, but are they any good?

A quick trawl round central London Greggs (all defiantly un-hipstered) rewards me with a fiery vegetable madras bake and a katsu chicken bake. The first thing that strikes me is the pastry is described as “a sourdough-flavoured case”: what even is that? It’s either sourdough, leavened by a natural starter, or it isn’t. The shelf-barker photograph of the chicken shows a robust pasty, pregnant with creamy chicken. The reality delivers something that, when cut open, has a thin, taupe smear along the bottom half – no wonder it’s lower in calories, there’s hardly any of it – that tastes almost exactly like a dimly remembered Vesta curry. The crumbed dough is chewy and elastic and vaguely tangy; the whole thing isn’t awful, but I’m happy never to eat another one.

The vegetable one, however, is nudging delicious – in a corner-shop samosa kind of way. It’s studded with kalonji seeds and is generously filled with green beans, potatoes, carrots, onion and peas, and is genuinely fiery, with a heady collection of spices, cumin and chilli to the fore. Surprising. I’m so carried away with the success of this that I order a caramel and pecan “Greggsnut”, the chain’s version of a Cronut (“We’re not allowed to call them that,” says the assistant in some alarm). Not sourdough at all, but if you like sickly sweet, this is the one for you.

None of it is as bad as the hideous food snob in me expected. But if all you wanted was a sausage roll or a steak bake, it’s unlikely to sway you. I’m guessing this is an attempt not to convert, but to get the young, Deliciously Ella brigade through the doors, as older fans of Greggs’s traditional offerings are dying off. Hmm, good luck with that one.

For full context, I also try a cheese and onion pasty for the first time in God knows how many years. The pastry is papery and dry, the filling an indeterminate salty gloop. I can’t believe I used to love them. It is revolting.