The secret to making egg-fried rice

Getting a takeaway doesn’t quite mean what it used to. The choice used to be between a pizza, ‘an Indian’ or ‘a Chinese’, and was reserved as a Friday night treat, to be eaten out the box while flopped on the sofa watching Cilla Black’s Blind Date.

Nowadays one is as likely to order a truffle risotto as a Pizza Hut combo deal. Furthermore, many millennials and Gen Z-ers seem to have no qualms ordering takeaway several times a week, carefully transposing the slow-cooked beef Massaman curry onto bone china so they can pretend (to themselves or their Instagram followers) that it’s home-cooked – honest.

But all these new trends give the old-school takeaway options a somewhat nostalgic appeal. Chow mein and Kung Pao chicken for some reason appear infinitely more alluring when served in those little red boxes, even if they only seem to come like that in the movies.