With their social media channels blowing up thanks to the rave reviews their baked potatoes are earning, the Lancashire Post headed down to Preston's Flag Market to try the internet famous culinary offerings of The Hot Potato Tram
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00:00 Hi guys, my name's Jack Marshall, I'm a digital reporter with Lancashire Post and
00:05 today we've got quite the tasty story on our hands. A local Prestonian purveyor of
00:10 hearty baked potatoes which has gone global thanks to its viral social media content.
00:17 Determined to suss out what makes these spuds so special and keeps the city's hungry masses
00:21 coming back for more, I headed down to the Flag Market one lunchtime and was faced with
00:24 an immediate dilemma. These boys are so popular there's invariably a queue for their popular
00:29 pommes de terre. Joining the salivating masses, I promise we were all quite civil and waited
00:37 our turns like good British citizens, I shuffled gradually forwards, greeted with a menu featuring
00:42 promising phrases like chicken curry, garlic butter and beans.
00:46 Do you want any butter?
00:48 Err, please? Can we have a Bob Roll as well please?
00:52 We haven't got any at the moment.
00:54 Oh, no worries.
00:56 Too busy though, we're not doing operations.
00:59 With the precious goods secured, I headed back to the office to metaphorically rub my
01:05 colleagues' faces in the spuddy goodness I had to look forward to.
01:09 Just as soon as I could get this layer of tinfoil off. As you can see, not the most
01:15 dexterous with the tinfoil. Anyway, big reveal. And there we have it. I know that looks very
01:21 melted and very messy but I mean, what do you want a baked potato to look like?
01:26 I decided to go for the chicken curry and cheese option which, granted, may not sound
01:31 like it works but good lord did it work. It was brilliant. Having carried this back to
01:36 the office and the warmth of the potato having melted everything, it was just a big gooey
01:40 morass of carbs, happiness, joy, childhood memories, faint hints of possible future regret
01:49 once I'd eaten it and felt like sleeping rather than doing any journalism. So, yeah,
01:54 time to get stuck in and basically, this was a case of trying to peel the layers of cheese
02:00 away from the potato and getting slightly more frustrated because you just kind of want
02:06 to put this food in your mouth but can't because of the amounts of cheese involved.
02:11 So it was very much a task which required plenty of patience and perseverance, although
02:17 the payoff, I've got to say, was absolutely extraordinary. I mean, all you have to do
02:21 is take a look at this. It looks pretty amazing, it tasted pretty amazing, it filled me up
02:25 on a pretty cold day. It was just what the doctor ordered when outside's cold, you can
02:31 never get your hands warm, you can never properly heat yourself up. Having a spud like this
02:36 warming you from the inside was bang on, it was perfect.
02:39 On to actually reviewing the potato itself now and it was really well done. It was nicely
02:45 cooked, the inside of the potato was really fluffy, it tasted good as well, it wasn't
02:49 just swamped by the ingredients on top, even though it does look like it. It was really
02:54 nicely cooked. The outside, possibly, one of my small nitpicks would have been that
02:59 it was better seasoned maybe with a bit more salt and pepper, so the outside, the skin
03:03 of the potato had a bit more flavour to contribute to the whole thing. But generally, the potato
03:07 itself was really nice. When it came to the curry on top, the curry sauce was just excellent.
03:13 It was like a crowd please, you can't obviously do a vindaloo and blow everyone's heads off
03:17 because you've got to cater to all tastes. So it was like a nice balanced curry, nice
03:21 fruity flavour to it. The chicken, there wasn't loads of it but when you did get a bit it
03:26 was nice. Overall, it was a great meal, a hearty kind of bit of food, bit of lunch on
03:32 a cold day, so you can't really go wrong with something like that. So yeah, overall, I'd
03:37 give it a very good rating and yeah, gets a thumbs up from me.
03:40 May.
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