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6 articles
It sounds like the chef's proudest creation, but 'house special' is often menu shorthand for 'a bit of everything' — and a small pricing trick. Here's how to decode it, work out whether the extra pounds are worth it, and order the dishes a Chinese takeaway kitchen actually does best.
Yung Chow, chop suey and curry sauce with chips often get called fake Chinese food. That misses the point: they are a British-Chinese menu dialect, shaped by migration, economics and the wok. This is a defence of the dishes that stayed on our high streets.
Before the app, there was the phone call: the menu on the fridge, the number 42, the hold music and the eternal question, 'collection or delivery?' A fond defence of a British Chinese takeaway ritual worth keeping in 2026.
Ordering the set meal for two gets you a look normally reserved for people who ask for ketchup in a restaurant. It shouldn't. Here's what the format gets right, how to tell a good set from a lazy one, and which combinations are actually worth your money in 2026.
Can a normal British kitchen fake the smoky char of a takeaway wok? We tested carbon steel, maximum hob heat, baking soda velveting and more, then put it all into a simple beef chow fun recipe. Here is the equipment that matters and the myths to ignore.
Salt and pepper chips didn't come from Canton or from a marketing team — they came from Scottish chip-shop habits colliding with a Cantonese wok. Here's the origin story, what makes the seasoning actually work, and how to get that wok-heat finish on a domestic hob.