This packed takeaway certainly doesn’t break the golden rule

A packed takeaway is a good takeaway. Okay, the golden rule might not apply at chucking out time on freshers week near the university, but it has served me well over the years.

And Saturday was no exception, when I chanced upon The Season Chinese Takeaway in Croston Road, Garstang, during a motorhome trip to the area.

The takeaway looks like your typical town centre takeaway, complete with huge backlit menu board covering an entire wall and plastic oriental ornaments.

Behind the counter a fast talking, gillet-wearing host holds court handing out bags of food and taking orders from the queue of diners.

Six-deep in the queue, we studied the large menu settling on a poultry heavy sharing feast of chicken and cashew nuts, chicken satay, chicken fried rice and, to mix it up a bit, king prawn chow mein. Side orders of noodles, curry sauce and prawn crackers ensured the six of us – four adults and two kids – wouldn’t be going hungry. It cost a total of £32.

A quick booze run from the off licence next door and 15 minutes later we were laden up with our food, not bad considering there must have been 30 people through the door while we waited.

The food was excellent. Everything was piping hot and the portions were decent, which meant I got a chance to raid the motorhome’s minuscule fridge for a second helping later that night. The Season doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises, it’s all your standard Chinese takeaway fare – but that is no bad thing.

So many takeaways take on too many things and end up doing it all poorly. The Season knows what it is, doesn’t try to be anything more and does it well.

For a good quality, unfussy local takeaway you can do a lot, lot worse than this one.

Karl Holbrook

Star rating: 8/10