To think the standard of Chinese takeaways has dropped significantly?!

Our local Chinese is on holiday, tried elsewhere but its not the same 😭😭 they do lovely chicken with ginger spring onions and garlic. Even the teenagers love it. Only problem is the chips end up eaten walking home 😭😭😁

@beezlebubnicky msg causes over-active bladder, to name a few things. So yes, there are physical side effects

The ones round my way are all very poor. Last time I tried one, I couldn’t bear to eat more than a few mouthfuls. It was so vile I wouldn’t even give any of the ‘chicken’ to the cats. So disappointing….

Finally some sense!

It is the salt making you feel sluggish etc- NOT MSG.

Ha. It's funny because I have struggled for years when my family wants Chinese as I don't eat meat, don't like the texture of their king prawns and I don't like Chinese veg (weird mushrooms, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots etc) so used to make do with chips and curry sauce .

However I've recently discovered their tofu dishes and am now enjoying trying the different sauces with them - and as a bonus they all have added onion, carrot and pepper as veg rather than the squishy or hard stuff .

Ours has always been poor. The menu hasn’t changed in 20 years.

Portion sizes down. Less meat. Even the bags of prawn crackers have got smaller. And the special fried rice is a joke - it’s like a game of Where’s Wally hunting for the prawns.

I have one pretty decent one near us (you actually get decent Chinese vegetables and not just onion and carrot) but it costs a lot. Another is OK, but everywhere else is shit. I only get it a few times a year max.

I just make my own now. Pressure cooker hoi sin pork so it is soft, egg fried rice and veg with toasted sesame seeds, or my own satay/Chinese curry. I do crispy beef and coconut prawns too, or get a steak and do a stir fry. I do like the taste of the Chinese MSG gravy though and can't replicate that.

It's much less of a lottery making your own. Nothing worse than wasting money on a crap takeaway. I do my own Greek and Turkish style kebabs, pizzas, burgers and nachos too. OH does a nice curry. We don't really need to order in as we can cook a decent version of a takeaway and are skinflints. I'm shit at Thai food though, that's £££ to order in and it's only me that likes it.

I feel the same for all take aways. We used have them weekly. Chinese. Kebab, pizza, Indian on rotation.
Now I'd sooner have a slice of toast.
There's only 1 decent Indian locally but its very expensive so it's a treat for special occasions.

We have Chinese takeaway every couple of months. The one we use is excellent, but we have to drive across town past half a dozen others to get to it! They have a really good vegetarian selection though, which was why we started using it in preference to the others.

Dear lord

We all grew up eating HK Cantonese fare. Yes, it was anglicised, but it was delicious in its own way. The kids of those takeaway owners didn’t bother going into the takeaways trade - they wanted professions, so this way of cooking is not being passed down. Now many of the new people running the takeaways are often from the mainland and trying to ‘copy’ this British Cantonese food and sadly not succeeding. Not all obviously, there are a few hotpot places springing up which is more authentic but I do miss well-cooked old style takeaways 😞

Not just takeaways - we struggle to find a good Chinese restaurant locally - had a favourite but they retired
Plenty of choice for lovely Thai and Indian restaurants
Im getting better at doing my own!
On Xmas eve we did lucky lettuce, crispy duck, seaweed, noodle dishes etc
There are some great Chinese supermarkets in Liverpool and Manchester so we head there and stock up on sake at the same time

People banging on about the MSG, what a load of fabricated racist shite. So you never eat meat, tomatoes or parmesan then? Glutamate is naturally occuring in loads of food and you eat it all the time. Not to mention it's in stuff like Doritos.

It does not cause any physical symptoms. What you're talking about is a result of all the sodium from the spy sauce etc.

When I used to have Chinese food , the MSG used to make me feel as if I've taken drugs ( never have ) but my heart would race , and I'd feel spaced out and jumpy .

I make my own sweet and sour and satay sauce now. I'll have a go at the crispy beef though, thank you @Ablondiebutagoody that's my go to when ordering a Chinese meal, so it'll be good to do it myself.
We used to use a local one, but a couple of years ago, they really went down hill, the food was abysmal. I see they only have 2.8 stars on Just Eat now! Grim!
I found no beef in the crispy chilli beef either! And about one and a half large onions and two slices of green pepper! It's a total rip off!

I got me and the kids a Chinese other night first time in ages. Not going there again and it's our local. Chicken fried rice used to have peas through it and lots of chicken. Don't know if anywhere even does make it like that anymore. But the way they had made it was just fried rice with shredded chicken shoved on top and a bit of a sauce on the top aswell it was rotten and the chilli chips were soggy too

Our local Chinese is still consistently good, and we also have a really nice local Indian curry house.

Neither of them are on Deliveroo or Uber Eats. The Chinese delivers and you have to pay cash (and their delivery guy is lovely, and never rings the bell as he remembers we have young kids). The Indian doesn't deliver and is collection only.

We've stopped using Deliveroo and Uber Eats because it's so expensive, often crap quality, and they treat their drivers so badly as well.

No link I'm afraid. Slice beef really thin (obv), put it in a bowl with loads of cornflour, salt and pepper and a tiny amount of 5 spice, coat it well with the flour and deep fry in batches. Keep it warm in the oven.

Slice up loads of carrot, green pepper, brocoli etc. Stir fry but keep crunchy. Add garlic and ginger. Pour over a sauce made from roughly 50% sweet chilli sauce, 20% ketchup, bit of soy, juice of a lemon, extra chilli if you want, 30% water. You want it quite runny. Whack the beef back in. Thicken up a little. Spring onions on top. Bosh.

All the slicing is a pain in the ass and it's messy to make, but waaaaay better than my local take away. All the crunchy veg really lifts it.

Completely agree. My DH and I were looking for a good Chinese takeaway this week, and gave up. I prefer to save up for a special meal at a lovely Chinese restaurant like Mr Chow or Hunan in London.

I don't buy Chinese takeaways anymore as 80% of it is bloody onions. They cram onions into every single dish and give you two measly and scraggy bits of frozen and deep fried bleurgh. If i wanted a plate of onions and oil I'd make it myself ffs.

Homemade lemon chicken is the best btw

M and S Chinese starters and make our own mains.

Not had a takeaway for years. They are so poor and expensive. Even the best rated ones are crap now. We gave up.

I think it can be really hit or miss depending on your area. We moved somewhere with very limited Chinese options, but the ones available were (what I would class), pretty expensive! We usually pay £50 for a meal for two, by the quality has always been fantastic

its always more than I’d like to pay for a night in, but every time we order with friends, they rave about the quality of food. Thankfully the in-laws appreciate the fact when they stay and we order for 4 (plus the 5 year old), it’s close to £100 and they always offer to pay as it’s a lot but so tasty. If the quality dropped though, we wouldn’t dream of continuing

We had one open near us and so many people were raving about it, said it was amazing etc. I got a takeaway and thought it was crap. Everything tasted of the same spice mix. They don’t even do lemon chicken which is what I usually get. Crap