Munchie box, Glasgow, Scotland: A wee bite after lagers

Munchie box gold, including tandoori chicken, doner kebab meat, pakora, fries and saladish mulch. (Photo by Flickr user surrealist303.)

As a group, Buffalo eaters don’t flinch from meals that take on aspects of a caloric cage match. Watch four husky fellows pillage a steaming bucket of Duff’s hot wings, and you find yourself making sure to keep hands and loose jewelry out of the way of moving machinery.

In that spirit, on behalf of the greasy-knuckled eaters of Buffalo, New York, I salute you, Glasgow pizza shops. I wish you were here, and I have no more heartfelt compliment.

In the west of Scotland, in the towns and villages surrounding Glasgow, there is a delicacy available in some of the more discerning fast-food outlets. It’s called the Munchy Box (sometimes just Munch Box) and it’s a sight to behold. The one I bought for this article is a regular-sized one, in a 10″ pizza box for about a fiver, but they can come in 12″ or beyond for eight quid and up.

You’ve got doner kebab meat, nan bread, chicken tikka, pakora, onion rings – and fries, or “Glasgow salad.” Plus two different kinds of sauce.

You’ve got a ways to go, Buffalo. Next: chicken wings served with bleu cheese dressing and gravy?

In a related Metafilter thread, el_lupino writes:

Glasgow remains the only place on Earth I have ever been offered a deep-fried frozen pizza. And none of your low-triglycerides polyunstaurated safflower oil deep-fried, either. Some sort of dark brown high viscosity liquid. It may have begun its life as beef tallow, but something horrible had happened to it since then. Due to my aversion to fish as an adolescent, I went for the pizza. (The fish would have been fried in the same manner anyway.)

Even as a zit-faced 15-year old whose frontal lobes were drowning in a sea of hormones, concvinced of my own invincibility and that frying was the only way food could be properly prepared, I knew after eating it that I had done something terribly, terribly wrong.

EDITED TO ADD: Matthew, who took the picture above, checked in to say hello. Here’s his take on the experience. (He reports that he was warned by the deliveryman: “The guy who came to the door was well fat. He said “I hope this is for 2 people – I tried to finish it and couldn’t!”)

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