There are more takeaways nowadays than you can throw a chopstick at, but it wasn’t always so.

In the Sixties you could count the Chinese and Indian takeaways on the fingers of two hands and as they didn’t do home deliveries you’d have to collect.

You could actually hear your meal sizzling away in the kitchen as they cooked it freshly and I remember it nearly always tasted delicious.

Not so now and it’s not just me who thinks so.

I know little about the catering trade, but I get suspicious when the meal arrives just minutes after you put the phone down.

Rice for instance nearly always tastes dry and stale as though it’s been hanging around on a hot plate for too long.

Chicken is cardboard textured and tasteless, and as far as the lamb goes, well it could have been drawing its pension in an old sheep’s home prior to jumping into the Dansak sauce pan!

Chinese food, no matter where you get it from, looks and tastes as though it has come directly from central casting! It’s all the same. It arrives compressed into its containers, and the experience is not usually pleasant.

Indian food often comes drenched in ghee, that clarified butter so beloved by heart attack victims, and the rice sometimes is inedible.

My question is; do takeaways source their ready meals from some far away central depot and just microwave it direct from a fridge as required, doing away with kitchens and chefs?

Their food used to taste fresh and moist and mostly delicious. Doesn’t anyone out there do a decent takeaway any more?

Trevor Murdin
Flemming Crescent
Leigh