nery's - åneby, norway

Rating:  6 / 10

Åneby, a tiny town of 1500 people, 40 minutes from Oslo is hardly the sort of place you'd imagine finding a Filipino take-away. However, a gang of four sisters from outside Manila took over an empty storefront by the main road and opened an Asian supermarket and a small take-away housed in an old trailer. 

Being ever curious of anything from the east, I gathered my wits about me and headed there for a spot of lunch.

The delightful owner explained to me that they had moved in last October and things were going well. A steady stream of cars plying the highway would turn off to sample their food before continuing into the obscurity beyond. I was recommended to get the tasting plate which would give me a good overview of what they were cooking up.

Being a mild and sunny day, I parked myself on a chair outside and watched the traffic. Within 10 minutes a polystyrene box was handed to me and I opened it cautiously and curiously. 

For 100 Kr you couldn't complain about the portion size. A decent pile of rice, a pork curry, some spring rolls and a couple of dumplings made up the affair. 

I'll confess to not being the biggest fan of Filipino cuisine, having been to the country over 10 times and travelled it's entire span on the constant hunt for food that wasn't overly sweet, underwhelming or doused in vinegar and soy sauce. Sadly this didn't change my mind.

The dumplings were probably the best thing on the plate, and I suspect they were packet frozen ones, the spring rolls were boring, the rice was nothing to write home about, but the main culprit was the curry. It had that general tastelessness that creeps it's way into so many Asian take-aways slightly outside the centre where the fear of offending the local palate is forefront in calculations. I'll go out on a limb and say the curry would probably not have been much different had it been served ​in the Philippines, but this goes down to personal preferences and I still struggle to understand how a nation surrounded by Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Taiwan can not have managed to adopt at least some of the fascinating flavour profiles of their immediate neighbours. 

These recommendations are just personal opinions based on my palate, things change, chefs get fired or replaced, places open-close, relocate, so take it all with a pinch of MSG and discover your own gems too. But please do try a few of these, they have been researched exhaustively.