LATE NIGHT TAKEAWAY

Proustian memories inspired by madeleine cakes are all very well and good, but I think I can do one better.

Working at Rickshaw's Chinese takeaway one summer as a teenager, I have vivid memories of returning home in the early hours of the morning to catch up on VHS-recorded episodes of Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show. I’d devour a Hong Kong special fried rice slathered in barbecue sauce, a bag of chicken balls with sweet and sour sauce (if I was lucky), and wash it all down with an ice-cold can of Coca-Cola that gave me a near brain freeze.

Somehow, American comedy and Chinese takeaway just felt like the perfect pairing back then. After hours of scrubbing starch off rice, deveining prawns by the sink-load, and deboning chicken after chicken, nothing beat relaxing with the hilarious antics of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer—or the satirical brilliance of Larry Sanders and his guests.

Thanks to the BBC’s bizarre scheduling of these two iconic shows in the early ’90s, you could never be quite certain when they’d air. Most often, it was on a Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday evening—a sort of TV guide lottery. Luckily for me, during that summer at the takeaway, it usually fell on the weekend, turning my post-work wind-down into something that felt worthy of catching a late-night comedy show at Dangerfield's or The Improv in New York City.

There was also something extra vivid and colourful about Seinfeld at that time, with its almost garish palette of felt reds, banana yellows, and denim blues, which seemed to echo the reddish-orange glow of the sweet and sour sauce and the Christmas Pantone red of the Coca-Cola cans surrounding me. Somehow, they all seemed to complement each other aesthetically—all carrying a cartoon-like quality that made them feel larger than life.

By the time I had sated my appetite and thirst with my Hong Kong feast contained in foil trays, I’d often find myself hiccuping and burping through an episode of The Larry Sanders Show, which somehow felt appropriate given how full of themselves most of the characters were. Garry Shandling’s biting satire of a late-night talk show host felt more suited to a cocktail of some description (though I was too young for that at the time) than to my takeaway-fuelled chaos of Seinfeld watching. But between the two, I was finessing the broader and more nuanced spectrum of my own comedy sensibility. There was a time for the zany, immature antics of Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine, just as there was for the more subtle narcissism of Larry Sanders and his sidekick Hank—not to mention the neurotic sketch writers biting their nails behind the velvet curtain of the TV studio, especially Phil.

Looking back, it wasn’t just the food or the comedy that made those nights feel special. It was the rhythm of it all—the long shifts at Rickshaw’s, the clattering of woks ringing in my ears, the smell of soy sauce clinging to my clothes, followed by the quiet walk home through empty streets, knowing I had a secret world waiting on tape. There was something comforting in that ritual: the snapping back of a ring pull, the fizz of a Coke can, the glow of the TV, and the comic scenarios of characters who felt, in their own strange way, like friends.

Even now, whenever I catch an old episode of Seinfeld or The Larry Sanders Show, I’m right back in that summer: tired, hungry, happy, and convinced that the right combination of food and culture can engrave indelible memories in the store cupboard of the mind, just like leftovers from a late night takeaway.