Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 11:32:22 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Chinese takeaway - do you always get the same?

Started by Barry Admin, November 20, 2021, 05:40:08 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Always the same?

Same dish for years
Alternate between a small number
Different every time

Shit Good Nose


mothman

I even Tweeted about it! I'm very proud of it. Feels like ages since I last made a proper curry from scratch.

Ferris

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 20, 2021, 10:33:06 PMI got a christmas card posted to me from the Ghurka Kitchen one year.

The one in Edinburgh used to send em every year, as did the himalaya kitchen. Rival Christmas cards, but only one (forget which) sent us a calendar.

Shit Good Nose

I think I spread the love amongst several different takeaways round here too much to be getting christmas cards or calendars from any of them.  Our main Indian and Chinese places (next door to each other about a minute's walk from our house) know my face, but not my name or anything.  Plus my part of the Nose family order always varying so much stops them getting a fix on me.

Does anyone's Chinese or Indian open on christmas day?  Our main Indian used to cos the family that ran it at the time didn't celebrate christmas at all, so new year's day was the only day of the year they were closed.  Main man in there said they always got the same half a dozen customers doing big orders.  But his brother took over the business a few years later and decided to close christmas day, and boxing day as well.


Dex Sawash

Where is jockice? Do we know where he stands on Chinese food?

pigamus

Crispy beef is always a massive lottery. It's different in practically every different Chinese and there about six different sauces it can come in.

Cold Meat Platter

Peking spare ribs is a favourite. Or BBQ ribs.
Special curry (ALL THE MEATS)
Shredded beef in chili sauce
Yang Zhao fried rice, or special fried rice
The evergreen sweet and sour of course
Chips and curry sauce
Anything with char siu in it
Lemon chicken, in Scotchland it's usually a battered breast sliced up in lemon sauce with beansprouts.
Chow mein is nice but it's one of those things that's really easy and quick to make so I feel guilty about buying it.

flotemysost

Quote from: Cold Meat Platter on November 20, 2021, 11:21:49 PMThat'll annoy those people who go berserk about putting fruit in savoury dishes, as if it's some kind of crime against nature.

I got quite into making pineapple rice over lockdown. Putting sultanas in anything savoury always seems to me like it belongs on the same bill as prawn cocktails and foil hedgehogs seppuku'd with cheese and pineapple cubes on sticks, though - a relic of the past.

mothman

This summer we stayed a couple nights in a hotel on Jersey which was very dated (but well-maintained and clean, not run down) and their restaurant menu was positively antiquated - they even had prawn cocktail on the menu. We must have been the youngest people staying there.

Replies From View


stonkers

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on November 20, 2021, 11:24:10 PM
Quote from: Cold Meat Platter on November 20, 2021, 11:18:02 PMFrom wiki:

"In some Chinese restaurants in the United Kingdom (particularly in Scotland) Chicken Maryland can be found under the "European" or "British" section of the menu. It consists of a breaded, deep fried chicken breast served with a slice of bacon, a banana or pineapple fritter (or both) and chips."

it seems like a holdover from the age of prawn cocktail

Soooooo.....not chicken Maryland then?

They're blatantly just making it up as they go along aren't they.  It's tikka massala for the European Dishes orderers.

Consider my hat fucked because that's absolutely what I thought chicken Maryland was until now. I definitely used to get it from the Chinese when I was very wee and more of a fussy eater, I remember being horrified by accidentally biting into the banana fritter thinking it was chicken. My mum would make herself fairly often as well.

seepage

I always thought Chicken Maryland should be called Chicken Antietam instead.

dissolute ocelot

Buy a tub of Chinese curry sauce powder, mix a couple of heaped tablespoons with hot water and whisk on the stove, pour over anything fried. Job done. (Also works on chips.)

I've not had a Chinese takeaway in a couple of years; there was one near me that did good tofu with chilli and garlic, or rather they did that well except when the chef had the night off and you got tofu cooked any old way (soft, hard) with a super-random amount of chilli.

The Dog

Mr Ho's Magic Wok has the best bins in town, but I don't get involved with the occult. 

colacentral

The Slow Boat in Newport does the best special fried rice and curry sauce in the UK. I've eaten from dozens of Chinese takeaways from all over the UK, and the special fried rice is always dreadful. They all pretty much taste the same too, same with the curry sauce (which I assume is just the same powder mix ordered by every restaurant), but The Slow Boat does those two things differently somehow. Having grown up with it, it was really depressing to move around the country and find that Chinese takeaways are usually abysmal, at least in the fried rice and curry sauce department, the latter typically being a bland, thick sludge.

Someone on the first page said something about having a Chinese friend who knew what to order - I'm pretty sure most restaurants have a secret menu for Chinese people that's more authentic. I once had a takeaway menu with English text on one side and Chinese text on the other, with slightly different prices. I scanned the text with a translation app and got all sorts of weird dish names - Old Horse Rests Against a Tree - £4.50, that sort of thing. No idea if the translations were accurate.


Cuntbeaks

Love me some of that filthy black gravy you get from the Chinese. Probably about 90% salt, but all the better for it.

I end up paralysed by indecision when ordering as i like to have various things, including chow mein, rice AND chips to go with the main courses. Not loads of each though, but having them all is important, but not always feasible if im just getting for myself.

One near me does a set meal for one for a tenner. I normally get

Hot and sour soup
Small salt and chilli ribs
Kung Po combination (you can get any main course except for duck and king prawns)
Plain chow mein (70p supplement)
Small prawn crackers

Decent value, and the stuff is pretty decent.


shoulders


Hat FM

Quote from: pigamus on November 21, 2021, 12:32:48 AMCrispy beef is always a massive lottery. It's different in practically every different Chinese and there about six different sauces it can come in.

got it from somewhere a few months ago and they didnt provide any sauce whatsoever. wtf?

Blue Jam

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on November 20, 2021, 08:00:20 PMDeep fried chicken balls and that luminous orange plum sauce.

Hard to see past that I'm afraid.

Sweet and sour chicken
Lemon chicken
Duck in plum sauce

Count me in as another fan of all the 100% authentic dishes.

When I lived in Whitechapel there was a Chinese takeaway that did amazing fish and chips [EDIT: Empire. Still going apparently but reviews suggest the quality has gone downhill]. That was about 15 years ago though. Not had a proper chippy tea since then.

shoulders


Neomod

Had some lovely Beef and Mushrooms and Special fried rice with prawn crackers at the weekend. Spoon the beef/mushroom/rice into the crispy shells and BAM! Taste sensation.

My usual go to is prawn toast/crispy seaweed, prawns in black bean sauce and egg fried rice.

pigamus

Quote from: Hat FM on November 22, 2021, 11:31:09 AMgot it from somewhere a few months ago and they didnt provide any sauce whatsoever. wtf?

Yep, had that one as well - with garlic and chilli i think

Blue Jam

Isn't crispy chilli beef supposed to come with no sauce? It's so greasy it doesn't really need any.

Hat FM

Quote from: Blue Jam on November 22, 2021, 01:48:05 PMIsn't crispy chilli beef supposed to come with no sauce? It's so greasy it doesn't really need any.
this wasnt. dryest thing ever. a terrible day.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Blue Jam on November 22, 2021, 01:48:05 PMIsn't crispy chilli beef supposed to come with no sauce? It's so greasy it doesn't really need any.

Whether it should or not is another question, but it normally comes with a...I guess you'd call it a "coating" of a sweet and sour chilli type sauce.  I don't think I've ever had it completely dry, nor have I ever had it swimming in a sauce.

Fancy some crispy chilli beef now.


Gurke and Hare

Some combination of

Chicken and sweetcorn soup
Hot and sour soup
Salt and pepper squid
Spare ribs
Curry something (although it always seems a bit pointless since chinese curry is so easy to make yourself with the paste you can get at a Chinese supermarket)
Sweet and sour something("Hong Kong style", never the nasty balls that are about 1% filling and 99% half cooked batter)
Something in black bean sauce
Something with ginger and spring onion
Something with bamboo shoots and water chestnuts.

Sometimes get spare ribs and chips, although the chips are never really much good. In London there don't seem to be Chinese takeaways that are also proper chip shops, so the chips are just frozen ones.

paruses

Quote from: Neomod on November 22, 2021, 12:08:41 PMMy usual go to is prawn toast/crispy seaweed, prawns in black bean sauce and egg fried rice.

Forgot about prawn toast. Love it but always regret it.

Big Mclargehuge

Generally it's always:

Sweet and sour Chicken/Praw balls
Singapore/Chicken/Beef Chow Mein
and a Hot and Spicy Soup or Salt and chilli chips.

at least a couple of times a year me and the missus will order something "out there" just to see what it's like. but we always come back to the core above items

pigamus

Quote from: Gurke and Hare on November 22, 2021, 06:16:42 PMIn London there don't seem to be Chinese takeaways that are also proper chip shops, so the chips are just frozen ones.

I learned as a student in Cardiff many years ago that anywhere trying to be both a Chinese and a chip shop should be avoided like the plague