After a delayed long bus journey, we arrived at Manchester city centre. After checking in the hotel, we make our way to Chinatown to have our dinner.
Out of our expectation, the Chinatown in Manchester is larger than we have in mind, which means more choices for food!
After spending some time checking out menus of some restaurants, we decided that we would have Szechuan cuisine for the night. Hence, we chose Red N Hot Szechuan restaurant.
The interior of the restaurant was comfortable, modern, spacious and quiet.
From the left, we had a plum juice (酸梅汁) and an aloe vera drink (芦荟) priced at £2 and £1.80 each. The plum juice was very good, it provided a cure for the fiery meal that we had and possessed a sense of Chinese herbal tea which we missed a lot.
We had a jellyfish with bean sprouts (银芽海蜇) as our appetiser. Priced at £8.50, the starter was rather pricey but generously served with loads of fresh jellyfish topped with sesame seeds. It was quite different from the Japanese version, where Chinese vinegar was used for this dish. The jellyfish, when eaten with the bean sprouts, were crunchy and tasty, definitely a good start!
Since we haven’t had hot pot for ages, we decided to have their hot pot buffet, priced at £18 per person. For the soup base, we had the combination of soup bases (鸳鸯锅底) which includes the white soup base and the hot chicken soup base. The hot soup is completely covered with chilies, which triggered our excitement!
As for the ingredients, we are able to choose from the 16 options stated in the menu. We had a plate of thinly sliced lamb (肥羊).
The serving of the lamb slices were surprisingly large! The lamb were wonderfully delicious after soaking the spicy broth, they were so fresh and meaty. Tasted even better when dipped in the Szechuan garlic dipping (川味油碟) which they provided. Definitely something that you should not miss if you’re having hot pot in this restaurant!
We also had some Chinese leaves (白菜), fresh chicken meat (鸡肉), dried bean curd sticks (腐竹) and golden needle mushrooms (金针菇). The dried bean curd sticks, when cooked in the spicy soup, tasted extremely spicy, do challenge it if you’re after hot food!
Other than that, we also had fish balls (鱼丸), luncheon meat (午餐肉), king prawns (明虾), spinach (菠菜) and bean curd (豆腐). The king prawns were fresh, large, succulent and delicious, another item that we highly recommend to order! All ingredients are very fresh, the quality of food is definitely guaranteed.
We were so full after dinner that we find it really hard to make our way back to the hotel. Service was a little below average. But fortunately the quality of the food is worth a revisit! Other than hot pot buffet, the restaurant also offers a variety of Szechuan dishes which we would love to return for. For more information and their complete menu, please check out their official website here.
Restaurant Information
56 Faulkner Street,
Manchester M1 4FH,
United Kingdom.
Tel: 01612362650
