Following the occasionally traumatic series of “Best and Worst Preston Restaurants According To TripAdvisor”, Blog Preston will be playing Russian roulette with a new series of reviews: “Best and Worst Preston Takeaways According to Just Eat”.
I dived straight in at the deep end and ordered from Yangs Chinese, situated on Meadow Street just on the edge of the city centre. Reviews are varied, with some positive but many complaining about late deliveries, cold food and black fried rice.
I ordered and paid on the Just Eat app at 5.35pm on a Friday and the food arrived at 6.10pm. The delivery driver was pleasant and the food was still hot, which was a good start.
I had ordered the combo starter, which consisted of two spring rolls, two sesame prawn toasts, two deep fried wonton and two barbecue spare ribs. Good value for £5.50.
I’m going to digress with a little story. A friend of mine once sent her young son to school with a cheese string, which he hadn’t tried before. When she opened his lunch box after school, the cheese string had been shredded, but none of it was eaten. When questioned, he said he had peeled it but there was nothing inside. I remembered my friend’s son when I tried the wontons.
The spring rolls were unfortunately not empty, containing a couple of strings of carrot in a mushy paste, and none of the crunchy vegetables that should have been there. The prawn toast had a good amount of topping on them, but too much grease for my liking. The barbecue spare ribs were meaty and well-cooked, but I found the sauce eye-wateringly salty.
Next was the mysterious char siu bobo at £4.80. I had no idea what it was, as all it said on the menu was, “chef’s wicked special”. I was unsure if that meant that the chef’s special was wicked or I was being informed that the chef was wicked special. Both interpretations were intriguing, so I took one for the team and tried it out.
What I first assumed was a noodle dish turned out to have that faint strained-through-a-sock taste that I usually associate with bamboo shoots, julienned in this case. They overwhelmed the dish leaving me resentful that my takeaway had been spiked with vitamins. On the plus side there was also plenty of char siu pork, but it was in an inoffensive but generic sauce that unfortunately lost the Wicked Special vs Bamboo Sock fight.
I had also ordered a fried rice mini meal with curry sauce, which offered any other sauce added for 30p extra. I opted for the sweet and sour as I assumed from the description that it was instead of the curry. It wasn’t, it was in a little tub of its own and the fried rice mini meal also contained chips and curry sauce. When I upended the carton, I saw the notorious black fried rice, and realised it was coloured by a great deal of overpowering soy sauce. The chips were fine, but I found the curry sauce had little flavour and the sweet and sour sauce was watery.
The salt and pepper chips were also edible but a little disappointing as I had requested lots of seasoning and onions on them, which wasn’t evident.
Finally, I had added a fortune cookie to my order, which when read informed me that “honesty will gain you friends”. Fortune clearly needs to read my review of The Fleece in Penwortham and take some of its own advice. Maybe next time the takeaway could save on packaging and hide that sarcastic little nugget inside an echoing wonton.
All in all, I would give Yangs a four out of ten, as it was mostly edible but not at all fun to eat. I wouldn’t choose to order from this takeaway again.
Read more: Ten of the highest rated places for a Chinese in Preston
Review: Where to find the tangiest Chinese food in Preston
Have you ordered from Yangs? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below.