Up next in Blog Preston’s series on the best and worst reviewed eateries is Smashed Preston in Miller Arcade in the City Centre. Visitors praise ‘the best burgers in P-town’, and compare it to ‘Five Guys with beer and friendly staff’.

Last week, an attempted visit with my daughter to Rise for breakfast went pear-shaped due to the place being packed out, and resulted in a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to The Twelve Tellers instead. 

Rise is on the best rated list, whilst Tellers is on the worst, so the horror experienced by my daughter from that brutal bait-and-switch must have been equal to that of buying a dreamcatcher from eBay and being sent a preloved adult bedroom swing with an actual nightmare still snarled up in it.

Read more: Rise cafe looks to expand to new Preston city centre premises

I’m banging on about the Wetherspoons ordeal because on our way back to the car we saw a blackboard outside Smashed Preston advertising a weekday lunchtime offer of a burger/veggie hotdog, fries and a drink for £7.

That was cheaper than Tellers’ cheese, tuna and bean jacket potato plus drink deal, and I thought it would be interesting to compare what can be bought for that money elsewhere. 

Read more: Review: Preston ‘Spoons food – quite knife or forking awful?

Smashed Preston is a small venue with a lively atmosphere which, unlike a Wetherspoons, was casual without being itchy. 

I had the £7 burger, fries and drink offer, but with an upgrade to poutine chicken fries for £3.50 extra. 

I don’t know how poutine is pronounced so it came out sounding like I was asking for a megalomaniacal Russian dictator on my fries, but the person taking my order knew what I meant. Poutine is basically a combination of fries, gravy and cheese curds. 

Canadians reckon they invented it but English northerners know full well that we created cheesy chips and gravy as soon as our prehistoric ancestors learned to cook food and muck about with cows in a manner that, in retrospect, should have raised a few red flags to the other tribe members. 

I’ve never had cheesy chips with gravy because cheese and gravy sounds to me like two things that should never be combined, like Ed Sheeran and Game of Thrones or Katie Hopkins and anyone who isn’t Katie Hopkins, and also the awfulness of the word curd is up there with moist. However, it turned out to be a magical concoction because the person in the kitchen respects the fact that gravy is the lifeblood of the North, and to dishonour it is to dishonour us. Yes, YOU, Stonehouse Carveries.  

The curds didn’t taste of much and looked like the sort of unidentifiable thing that makes you give a small, involuntary scream when it gently bumps up against your hand when you’re washing up, but they added another layer of texture to the dish and made it last longer, which was fine by me. To be honest, the gravy was so good that I’d have eaten anything that was doused in it.

A good sized portion of Southern fried chicken strips at £5.95 had the same perfectly seasoned crunchiness as the chunks that topped my poutine, but we’d forgotten to order one of the interesting dips at 30p each, so we just slummed it with ketchup.  

My cheeseburger – part of the £7 lunchtime offer – was charred and meaty. It was big enough to fit on the bun without pulling a Rose in Titanic by pretending that the bun/door they’re on doesn’t have a foot of available space around it upon which an entire extra burger/Jack Dawson could easily fit.

As halloumi fries are literally pieces of fried cheese, anyone who loves cheese and fried stuff would be happy with them, as were we. They’re pretty hard to mess up, though I’m sure Wetherspoons would take a punt. 

The last thing on our order was a Dawg; an imported German whopper of a hot dog with bacon, chilli jam and chipotle sauce for £8.95.

Hot dogs are as compelling yet terrifying in equal parts as The Muppets; they can both bring you great joy or nightmarish horror. Most are essentially evil and should be avoided, like Big Bird but, fortunately for Preston, Scrandinavia, Vinyl Tap and Smashed Preston sell the Yoda type. 

Although my burger was fab, I had a bit of envy over that item. It smelled like a reassuringly posh fairground in which nobody dies. I like to think Tom Hardy would smell like that after hosting a safe and well-organised bonfire night.

Smashed Preston is an excellent, friendly bar that consistently serves fantastic meals with the care that is often absent from the big chains, and deserves its place amongst the most highly rated eateries in our city.

Read more: See the latest Preston news and headlines

That’s right, I called Yoda a muppet. It’s a lump of green silicone foam with some beardy guy’s fist up it, and it’s wise words come from the brain of a man who thought Jar Jar Binks was a good idea. If you disagree, strike me down in the comments and watch me become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.