Manchurian Legends

Enjoyed an excellent meal here with a friend. Braised pork belly with glass noodles was huge on flavour - the fat in the pork tender from a long braise. Sweet and sour pork did not hark of the fluorescent gunk you typically get - flat, lightly battered pork n a glorious vinegary sauce. Pork dumplings were average - quite thick-skinned and you can get better round the corner at Jen Cafe. Lamb skewers were dusted liberally in cumin and dried chilli and were best eaten as soon as served. Pink meat within was full of flavour.

Looking forward to returning to try more of the menu and dare my mouth with some more chilli. £20 a head for a full belly with a bottle of tsing tao seems like good value to me.
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Richard - View all reviews by this user
7 Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 8
Monday, January 02, 2012

Food was good, but service left a lot to be desired. First they 'forgot' to tell the chef our full order, they only realised this after we queried that all our order hadn't arrived a good 30 minutes into our dinner. Then the waitress was most surprised that we wanted to her to inform the chef and have our food prepared! The cold draft through the open door not making things comfortable.

Decent food, but probably a bit overrated if you believe the reviews.
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6 Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 4 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 6
Saturday, December 03, 2011

i wanted to come here after reading a few reviews raving on how good this place is. I took the risk and tried for myself. The deco of the place is everything but chinese or i was too dumb to see the connextion, but i liked it. burgundy walls, and black and white tiles and clocks everywhere, even if they were not working, at least the one i could see. I sat down on the first floor, so thumbs up fo the deco,

the menu has some pictures, be aware portions are very big and the pictures completely mislead you into thinking they are small. I ordered the ribs,,,, I was expecting spicy since where are talking about an area where food is spicy but i was dissapointed about the spicyness. Still nice and tasty, I also ordered the chilly rice which was the nicest of the lot. The dumplings were not as great as i thought. I ordered soya sauce since it came with no sauce at all. but they waiter came with vinegar telling me it will work better with the dumplings. it was true, and it saved it the dish, still i do not think i will order the 8 dumplings. I might give it a go for the two big dumplings..... tea was very good too. service was brilliant and the whole bill came for less than 20 quid.. i will come back here but i will try something else.. maybe something daring as tripe, or something similar...
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the golden palate - View all reviews by this user
8 Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 8
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

We ate here last night after reading Jay Rayner's rave review in the Observer supplement a few weeks ago and were not disappointed. We ordered a few of the dishes that Jay Rayner had mentioned and our favourites were the Xinjiang lamb and Bang bang king prawns. OMG they were hot hot hot but absolutely delicious! We also had a couple of crispy belly pork skewers and pork & pickled vegetable dumplings (8 in a portion), a bowl of rice (plenty for two) and 4 Tsing Tsao beers and all for £53.00 which we thought was very good value for money. Service was good - friendly and cheerful. Our only minor niggle was that our main courses arrived before our starters - but that only appeared to happen to our table while we were there.

We will definitely be back & this time I'll order completely different dishes as there were a huge variety to choose from. For the more adventurous of you there were stir fried chicken gizzards & heart & golden frogs with duck on the menu. Not sure if I'm quite ready for that yet...
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Lucy & Nigel
9 Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 9
Sunday, September 11, 2011