Great British Takeaway

The Great British Takeaway what can I say? Well, much of the time if lives up to its name but there are good reasons not to give it four or five stars.
First, the good stuff.
These guys don’t have the first clue about portion control, and I mean that in a good way. Handing over your quid-​fifty results in enough chips to give cholesterol poisoning to a small country. Well, maybe not quite so much, but a single large portion of chips (assuming everyone’s having pie or fish or something with it) will feed a family of four. No kidding.
They’re even like that with the chicken and fish on occasion; I’ve had them decide that a particular piece isn’t big enough (note that I wasn’t complaining) and just chuck in another bit for free. These people are not frightened of calories, no sirree. I blame them for the fact that I now shop for trousers at the local camping suppliers in the tent section.
The quality of the fish is usually excellent; unusually for British chippes nowadays, it tends to actually taste of something other than hot oil. The chicken is of decent quality, albeit nothing to get excited about, but the pies, sausages and sauces are — unfortunately — the same generic barely-​food you get everywhere nowadays.
All that said it’s just possible that the garlic mayonnaise they have here is the best in the world!
Not so good is the somewhat variable quality of the chips. If you go there during a slack time, my suspicion is that they don’t scruple to dunk some cooled-​down chips back in the fryer and sell them as fresh. That’s certainly what they’ve tasted like on recent occasions to me. For all that Nigella Lawson might recommend twice-​fried potatoes as the best way to make a chip, I don’t think that’s exactly what she meant!
Finally — and this loses them another point — there’s the staff. Some of them are great; typically you’ll get excellent service if you go during the early evening. During particularly busy times though, they seem to get — I’m sorry to have to say — a gaggle of alternately giggling and sneering teenagers in to man the oars and it isn’t terribly pleasant.
In short; the food’s not bad (but variable), the portions are enough to make famine-​relief workers burst into tears of frustration on the spot, the service varies from great to abysmal and you have to try the garlic mayonnaise!