I Am Pho - Chinatown, Manchester, England.

There has not been much new as far as east Asian food is concerned in the restaurants of Manchester over the last few years. However, here is one… I am Pho is the name of the first ever Pho (Vietnamese Beef Soup Noodles) restaurant in Manchester. There has always been a large Vietnamese community in Manchester, and I have always wondered why a place like this has not sprung up sooner.

Anyway, I have decided to give this place a try last month. It was located in Chinatown, next to the strip club, so if you go in the evenings, don’t let the sight of the burly bouncers put you off.

One word of warning … do not park your car outside the strip club. The bouncers will lean and sit on it. Because they look big and mean, they know no one will tell them off and they don’t care that they annoy the car owners.

Once in the restaurant you will notice that the layout was more like a café than a restaurant, but that is fine, because it felt clean and comfortable. However, the prices were not café prices. You could go to most Chinatown restaurants and order most noodle dishes at around the same price… about the £7.50 mark.

On the table is a range of good quality sauces and dips.

Of course, I ordered the signature dish, beef pho -  with the beef rare, so that it is cooked in the soup. There were other dishes on the menu but 80% of them were a variation of the pho soup noodles, with a few rice dishes and the customary Vietnamese summer / spring rolls as sides.

The verdict:

The soup was light … very light. It tasted refreshing but lacked flavour, as if it was a little bit too diluted or not enough beef was used in the stock.

The noodles were fresh as opposed to the dry / reconstituted type, which is better than the only other Pho in tried in Manchester, in a café in Ancoats.

The beef were sliced thicker than I would have liked it, making it slightly tough. They (the beef) somehow tasted rather detached from the soup .. hard to explain, but you know the taste you get when you feel that the ingredients do not belong to the dish because the taste is too different? Maybe this is because of the lack of beefy taste in the soup.

The portion was generous and adequate for most hungry diners. I would return if I needed another pho fix, but not too often as I do not think this is good value. I think under £5 would have been a fair price for this dish which does not consist of any expensive ingredients. 

Sapporo Teppanyaki, Manchester

This was the first time I had ever been to a Teppanyaki restaurant in the UK. Its only my second time in a UK Japanese restaurant. The first was an awful experience 10 years ago and it had put me off them.

On this occassion, it was a works do and I thought it was a good time to try again. The fact that this restaurant was rated the number 1 restaurant on Manchester on Tripadvisor gave me some optimism!

Unlike most city centre oriental restaurants, this one was not located in or around Chinatown, indicating to me immediately that they cater mainly for western diners. When I saw the menu, my thoughts were confirmed. I was a bit disappointed that there was no squid in the menu, but understandable as it is not a popular ingredient among Brits.

However, as the evening progressed, the whole dining experience was rather interesting. It was not like anything I had ever experienced before. But before that our starters arrived. I had a rather large portion of bbq spare ribs. Unlike your typical Chinese restaurant ribs, these were really tender and succulent. I suspect they have been twice cooked .... steamed and then baked. Great start so far.

Before the chefs began cooking our meals they went throught a few unusual rituals, which were very entertaining and engaging for the diners. However, I am certain there was nothing traditional about them and certainly does not appear to have anything to do with Japanese dining rituals, but please do correct me if I am wrong.

Firstly, the chef heated some scalloped potato slices and tossed them in the air, to each of the diners to catch with their mouth. He will keep trying until you catch it, leading to food all over the floor!

Next, he juggled some of the cooking utensils, like the bartenders in Cocktail juggled bottles. Then, just for show, he lit up the flat pan with some alcohol.

When it comes to cooking the food, we could see exactly everything they put into it. I kept waiting to see if there was going to be a secret ingredient but there was nothing obvious.

And here is my portion. This alone was £17. To their credit, all the ingredients were super fresh and you could have extra portions of rice if you wanted for free. It may not look much, but I assure you it was more than I could eat.

I must say however, that the food tasted very home-cooked, and not difficult to reproduce yourself. The flat pan meant that there was no "wok hei" taste in the food. However, I ended the night satisfied enough, as the price we paid was for the entertainment as well as the food. It was definitely worth experiencing, but I dont think it is something you can do on a weekly basis without wearing out the novelty value.

Location:

Sapporo Teppanyaki

91 Liverpool Rd Manchester M3 4JN

A Chinese Christmas in the UK

I think it is customary all over the western world that Chinese restaurants lay on special Christmas banquet menus adapted for the local taste. It is a bit late, but this was what we had when I went out with my office last Christmas (2009). I would say that this is a rather typical menu in most Chinese restaurants in the UK catering for the local people.

We had a regular and a vegetarian banquet at this (lol, honest!) restaurant in Manchester.

Starting with this Chicken and Sweetcorn soup




We also had this vegetarian sweetcorn soup, which tasted almost identical to the previous one, but with veg bits instead of chicken.


Then onto this mixed vegetarian starter - apart from the salad, spring rolls and gluten I do not know what the rest were, but they were quite nice.


This was the meat starter, consisting of some popular dim sum bites like har gau, siu mai, fried wonton, spring rolls and curry samosa (is this Chinese??).


Then onto the crisy shredded duck wraped in pancake rolls. Very nice but very typical of most western Chinese banquets








The vegetarians had this nut and veg stir fry to be wrapped in lettuce leaf instead. It was very tasty but I much prefer the duck.


This first main course was beef stir fried in a very sweet tangy sauce .. I think its OK sauce. My favourite dish of the evening.


SOme mixed veg dish for the veggies


And another! Both were ok but tasted very similar.



Chicken satay (not Malaysian satay sauce, but Jimmy's Sate sauce like this). Very nice tasted like it had citrus juice in it, which I have since started using it myself too.


And a rather generic chicken and mixed veg stir fry which was ok only.


Side dish was young chow fried rice. Nice but not exceptional. The veggies had just egg fried rice.


Overall a satisfying banquet and we got exactly what we expected.

Eason Chan is coming to Manchester

It is indeed a rare privilege for Mancunians to be treated to a performance by a a Cantopop superstar in our city. From the details below, you can see that it is not exactly cheap and they seem to have also chosen a rather small venue, probably not very confident of being able to fill up a large arena. However, I think they are underestimating his popularity here and I am sure the tickets will sell out very quickly. I think anyone who has even the slightest interest in Cantopop will want to go, whether they are a fan of Eason or not, as I cannot remember there ever having been an east Asian singer ever gracing our city. So get in there fast if you are from Manchester. Dont say you havent been warned!

And here is a clip of a song from the album above!

Chinese New Year Celebrations in Manchester 2009

My first blog for the new year, so Happy New Year and also Happy Chinese New Year for those celebrating. The weather has been really cold lately and I have not spent as much time in the kitchen as I would have liked to, as it has no central heating in it. Hence, the break since my last blog. Come spring, and I should be more in the mood to experiment further in the kitchen. I also have a few more stories to tell from my last visit to Malaysia and I will try to drop them in occassionally.


On Sunday 1/2/09, Manchester Chinatown celebrated Chinese New Year in the most extravagant event of the year so far. The celebrations were held in two venues, outside the City Hall and in the centre of Chinatown. The weather was barely above freezing, but it did not deter the crowds, majority non- Chinese, from turning up. This is not to say that there were only a few Chinese, but we account for such a small proportion of the UK population, even if we all turned up, we'd still be outnumbered by the others. It was great to see people from all other walks of life making attempts to learn more about the Chinese culture, despite the fact that many stalls were obviously setup to exploit those who knew little... I will show a little more about this further down.


It was 12pm and Princess Road, which cuts through the city centre, were closed to traffic and there was a huge crowd gathered in anticipation....





.. for this! A huge 15 metre Dragon dance, which danced for 30 minutes in front of the City Hall before making its way into Chinatown.



There were also other shows on a specially erected stage. Lilke this impressive acrobat show from a troupe from Yunan. All paid for by the City Council.




Moving into the heart of Chinatown, and there was a sea of people with lots of roadside stalls selling goods and services related to the occassion.





This stall had tacky goods which were lapped up by mainly non-Chinese.



And this one too! Loads of parents bought these cheap paper dragons for their kids to wave about.



You had to pay £1.50 for someone to write your name in Chinese with a calligraphy pen.





I dont even know what this is suppose to mean!





This was a genuine religious stall, in that you were given free lighted incense / joss sticks to dedicate to the buddha statue. I dont know what the furtune cookie packets had anything to do with buddhism though.

As for food, well, that's what the Chinese are known for in the UK, and the amount of food stalls we saw today did little to disprove the stereotype. What surprised me this year is that there are more stalls selling "Thai" food than any other types of food. I said that in inverted commas because the majority of the food dished out here were not in the slightest bit authentic and way overpriced. It would not have cost much more to eat in the warmth and comfort of a restaurant.

The stall pictured here sold Thai food.

More Thai food. This was one of the better stalls which looked like they made some effort with the food they sold.



This one looked impressive. Also Thai ... but he was actually reheating the noodles in a wok rather than actually cooking then in front of the customer. The guy behind him was grilling Thai satay ..not sure if that was fresh or also just reheating.



These lovely ladies were actually cooking Thai satay from scratch. Smelt lovely too, but too expensive for me to want to buy them.... 4 sticks for £3!

This Thai bbq chicken also smelt gorgeous!



These ladies were doing vegetarian fried noodles and rice. Did not look too appetising to me, as, they overloaded the wok and the flames were too low. Definitely no "wok hei" there! But it would have looked impressive to the uninitiated!


Some examples of the exorbitant prices charged! The fried noodles and rice dishes either don't or contained little meat!





Wow! £1 for a cup of hot water with a couple of dried chinese tea leaves diluted in it!



Look at the state of the bins! The food cant have been that good, for people to throw away so much of it! Looks like its going to be a feast for Mickey and Minnie tonight!



After all that walking around, we sat down for a meal in a restaurant and managed to order a portion of roast suckling pig. This little portion cost us £13. In the UK, a pig cannot be slaughtered under 8 weeks old. Hence, it has become quite meaty by then and also the skin has grown thicker than those eaten in South East Asia. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the treat thoroughly!



However, it cannot be compared to this half pig we had at Greenview Restaurant, Section 19, PJ in Malaysia,a few months ago, during our hols!

Chinese Buffet Restaurant in Manchester

Tsai Wu Oriental Buffet is located on Oxford Street, in Manchester, not far up the road from the universities. In my opinion, it is one of the best Chinese buffet restaurants in Manchester and does not resort to cheap tricks likes many London ones where you have to dig through hundreds of pieces of onions to find the meat. A daytime buffet meal costs only £5 whereas the eveneing weekend meal costs atround £10. The quality of the food is the same, except that they have a few more dishes in the evening, such as crispy duck pancakes, stir fried tiger prawns, stir fry squid and a gateau dessert. To be honest, I am usually too full to bother with the dessert anyway, so that does not bother me. At half the price, the daytime bufffet is by far the better value and although the quality cannot compare to an ala carte meal, it is nevertheless delicious.


Here is a picture of the shop front on a busy overcast winter Saturday afternoon on Oxford Street.


A small section of the food on display. They have mirrors on the display, so you are seeing only two rows of trays, not four.


Another section of the food on display.


Close up of the pork section... clockwise...bbq spare ribs, salt & pepper battered spare ribs, pork slices in Cantonese sauce and stir fry pork slices.


Close up... clockwise... chicken in chinese curry sauce, salt & pepper battered wings, green lip mussels in black bean sauce, sweet & sour chicken.

The noodle section.... clockwise.... Singapore fried meehoon, a stack of plates, fries fusili pasta and fried fresh egg noodles.


The frys section... onion rings, aubergine fritters, crabsticks fritters, chips, mushroom fritters and mini pring rolls.


Some of the mixed dishes I selected. Notice the lack of rice and noodles. Why choose the cheap ingredients when it all costs the same??!!




A rather strong bowl of hot and sour soup. Rich and meaty.


My favourite dish! A bowl of clear seafood soup consisting of fishballs, fish maw, mussels, shrimps, tofu and chinese cabbage.


Just a light dessert afterwards.. some ice cream. They even have a whippy ice cream machine free for you to use.


After all that, we dragged our heavy stomachs off the seat and walk wearily to the car park. Do not expect to continue city centre shopping after a meal here. You will not be in the mood for walking!