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

[Orangelight23]

So after a very very long day we got the kids to bed, opened a bottle of wine and eagerly awaited our Chinese takeaway.

It was woeful! £40 that we could have just thrown away, we should have learnt our lesson last month when we had an equally awful one from somewhere else. Is it just out area or has the standard dropped?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 .

Finally some sense!

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

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….

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

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 😭😭😁

What you are eating isn’t Chinese food, and it almost feels offensive to label it such. That is pretty much across the board for provincial Chinese takeaways. Real Chinese food is fresh ingredients, not greasy, and definitely no curry anywhere. I am not from the uk but lived in China for years and recently looked at a menu for a uk chinese takeaway and didn’t recognise 90% of the menu.

Air fryer crispy duck , super easy. Shop bought pancakes and hoisin, delicious. About £8 including the duck for a whole duck. Don't need takeaways any more !

Migrant communities setting up restaurants and takeaways have always adjusted their dishes to suit the tastes of wherever they have settled. It's not exclusive to Chinese communities or the UK

We are lucky to have a fantastic chinese take away near us. The takeaway has been there over 25 years,enough said 😁

Loving the OP and posters who call it "Chinese takeaway" or "Chinese food" and not a "Chinese".

no doubt - the atomic red curries you find in provincial Indian restaurants are a prime example.

i just want to point out that very little in a uk ‘chinese’ restaurant would be considered edible in china. I think it is fine when some dishes are edited out (sharks fin soup, different cuts of meat, etc) but a great number of the uk Chinese classics are completely divorced from the original cuisine. It feels a bit off to complain about ‘Chinese food’ in the uk when it bears virtually no resemblance to anything you would find in China.

We rarely have takeaway these days as it is just crap. We had a rare curry lately and DH just said he’d rather I’d just made it.
Chinese is just a few bits in a sticky sauce. I think I’d rather just get fried rice, chips and curry sauce.
At least a pizza is still a pizza.

I call it Chinese "shitaway" - literally!

Ooh please educate us some more. What should we call it?

I agree and would go as far as to say most, if not all, takeaway food is crap. I don't know if it's just my area but even the pizza is starting to taste like nothing.

It's really depressing to spend £50-60 on Indian food and get small portions that don't contain much meat.

I understand that there's a cozzy livs situation going on but it's putting me off ordering food from anywhere.

@Ablondiebutagoody The Chinese pay the same level of attention to cuisine as the French would their own regional cuisine - great attention to ingredients and the finer points of cooking methods. There is subtlety and variety, and a great deal of energy put into perfecting particular dishes. Calling what you get in the uk takeaway ‘Chinese’ is a bit like calling what you get in a Greg’s pizza ‘italian’.

In my area there are no nice ones, but there is one in another town that we get now and again if I can be bothered driving. However our local butcher does specials- Chinese chicken stir fry or Mexican chilli beef that we get weekly (around £9 which is enough for 3 of us) and we make some rice to go with it and other sides and we always say it is so much better than a takeaway,

Nobody cares chief

I don't get it. I live in a town full of barbers and takeaways, and yet all the men have shit hair and the only decent takeaway is domino's.

I used to live a takeaway as treat, but it's all shit. Fish and chips are nicer in an air fryer, because no one sells soggy chips anymore.
Chinese all sticky and gloomy and sweet.
Ds doesn't like Indian.
We had a lovely Thai one, but it was quite expensive and closed.

Food deliveries are all expensive these days, and Chinese is the most disappointing one. We went into Chinatown to eat a couple of weeks ago and it so good, reminded me how it ought to be/ used to be.