In the final review of Blog Preston’s food van series, I paid my first visit to Scrandinavia near UCLan.
There appears to be two groups in Preston, one that raves about the food there, and a far bigger one that has never heard of it. I met a multitude of the latter group on my drive from Morrison’s car park to the takeaway. As I was already close by, I called ahead with my order, programmed Google Maps and set off.
Finding the Scrandinavia van that was a 1.5 mile drive away took 90 minutes, despite me asking five different people where it was. Google Maps would only tell me that it was in Greenbank Street but wouldn’t let me specify the address, and when I changed over to the Navmii app Snoop Dog kept insisting that I’d reached my destination, which was a filthy lie, CALVIN.
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I’d started wondering if Scrandinavia had some sort of Valhalla thing going on and customers had to die to get there, when I suddenly found it on a street I’d already driven up and down at least twice. It was hidden inside a black garage behind a high metal fence, and could only be identified by a sign on the railings that had previously been obscured by a lorry. I couldn’t see the van, just an arrow telling me to collect food ‘this way’.
I was so late collecting my order that the viking chefs had thrown it away, but they kindly offered to redo it for me and bring it out to my car, which they did with speed, and I finally made it home and unpacked my order.
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I’d gone for an Uther pork and boar hot dog with mustard, ketchup and crispy fried onions for £9 including skin-on seasoned fries.
Also an Astrid burger; a homemade beef burger topped with pastrami, bacon, salad, pickle and mustard mayo at £8.50 with skin-on fries, which I upgraded to be topped with pulled pork and cheese sauce for an extra £2.
It all looked fantastic. The burger was charred on the outside but pink in the middle, which was fine for me but I’d advise customers who like their meat well-done to specify that when ordering. It was packed with flavour and had enough of each topping to taste them all at once. Both the burger and the hot dog were in what looked like pretzel buns, which are sturdy enough to cope with a mauling.
The hot dog was next. The professional way of judging the quality of a sausage is estimating how much it might hurt if you threw it at someone. A Richmond sausage wouldn’t leave a physical injury but you’d carry the wet splatting noise to your grave, whereas a local butcher’s sausage could reliably knock a person’s glasses off. A blow from a Ye Olde hot dog would just make you laugh as long as it wasn’t still in the tin.
You could hack off a limb with a Scrandinavian pork and boar sausage. It was built like a school bully and tasted like smoke, meat and pillaging. The fried onions were perfectly crispy and the sensible mustard was meek enough not to attempt to overpower the sausage.
The accompanying portion of crisp, skin-on fries were topped with enough pulled pork and cheese sauce to have been a meal on its own, and again the quality of the ingredients was obvious. Excellent as it came, but next time I’m going to spice it up and add their Chipotle or Berserker Sauce on it for an extra 30p.
Scrandinavia isn’t cheap, in fact the menu is creeping up to restaurant prices, but it’s worth it. If you give it a try and decide to collect your order, tell your family you love them before you disappear into University territory forever. Or look on Scrandinavia’s Facebook page, which tells you exactly how to find them but isn’t as dramatically Norse.
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Has a viking ever tried to kill you with his sausage? Let us know in the comments.