The Walrus and the Bentobox

The latest twists in my life have been taking me on somewhat of a ride - up hills of effort, down descents of excitement and in contrast to working for my previous employers seems to be keeping the doldrums and depressions short and snappy rather than protracted and bitter. It's much more fun working for myself.

So that's all good yes? Anyway one of the exciting new things on the cards may involve me going to work in Germany for a few months... which having told my ex brought up rather a lot of unpleasant reaction over the weekend, harking back to our breakup (and most worryingly seeming like she was editing the story somewhat) making me feel very very upset. Didn't help that I was rather hungover mind... In the end it got to the point where we were both sulking at each other and I just figured it wasn't any good having this going on around the kids and said my good-byes.



So the therapeutic lunch was at Walrus - where they have a rather neat five-pound "bento box" deal.

Walrus itself is all very Northern Quarter cool - and environment wise feels a bit overly WHITE... very very white... white banquettes all around with little white tables and white stools and the odd bit of duck-egg blue trim. It's also starting to look a touch shabby for all the scuff marks despite only having been open a year or so. On a busy night perhaps it makes sense, but for me on a quiet monday lunchtime it's a little jarring.

The food though wasn't bad - rice alongside meat or fish or veg in a sauce and a couple of nice little oriental nibbles on the side. For a fiver this is really rather exceptionally good - the nearest equivalents like Rice seem to cost slightly more and not be anything like as refined. It comes served in a lozenge-shaped wooden box with mandatory chopsticks. To my mind there was perhaps a bit too much sauce going on with my chicken and perhaps not enough sauce with my companion's vegetables but it was all quite tasty.

The service was order-at-the-bar where there was a slightly bored looking young Russian guy who I spoke to for a while about the betrayal of the socialist revolution and cultural variations in tea-drinking habits and education systems. The food arrived reasonably quickly and was as fuss-free as one would expect for a cheap lunch. And yes - it really is a very very good deal and despite the whiteness I will be doing it again.

The next encounter with my ex we just got on with the usual stuff and didn't talk about it... but I have a sense of foreboding...

[update, nov 2010] the bento boxes have gone down-hill somewhat of late; I went in there a few weeks back and the nice gyoza have been replaced with over-salty cremated chicken bits. Not good. Staff changes and cutbacks by the taste of it.

Koh Samui

Rainy old Manchester... after a very odd and random encounter near Oxford Road station with someone I’ve not seen in 10 years I walked up into Chinatown, walked down Princess Street, toyed with the idea of going to swanky looking Obsidian and found myself in Koh Samui instead. And I regretted it.

It was busy so as I was on my own they put me in a rather dank corner underneath the window. It had that rather unpleasant smell which reminds me of flats I've lived in where the scumbag landlord is too tight to fix the roof, pointing, etc. There is probably not much they can do about it without digging up the road but it wasn't nice.

To get me going (and because I was starved) I got a bowl of prawn crackers with some “minced beef” dip stuff. Now the dip tasted rather like some combination of pork, mayo, peanuts and chilli-oil and so it may have been. Either it was something incredibly authentic or perhaps it was a joke-dish. I don't like mayo very much at the best of times.

The fish soup tasted good but was severely let down by the rather chewy bits of shellfish, once a scallop has got to the point of looking like limestone pavement it’s ruined. Really. Prawns and squid just as bad.

For mains I had "crispy" belly pork with morning glory. The morning glory was interesting, though I did have to remind myself that it is a bit like eating bind-weed. Sadly the pork wasn't the melty glorious experience I had hoped for and was more chewy than crispy.

The other diners, western mostly, seemed to be having a good time on christmas or end-of-term parties and perhaps this is the more appropriate method to visit such a place. But really I didn't rate it and won't be going back.

Red N Hot, Chinatown

Manchester's Chinatown is a slightly daunting place with restaurants, supermarkets and a hundred and one associated emporiums crammed in a few blocks of tall northern brickwork. Making a decision as to where to go can be pretty tough.

One of my favourites which I found pretty early on in my wanderings is Red N Hot an authentic Szechuan restaurant, tucked away up a flight of stairs on Faulkner Street. The restaurant has been refurbished recently and taken on a much more stylish appearance with it, before this it was pretty basic feeling but consistently packed with Chinese people tucking in to all manner of peculiar things. I've rarely seen many western faces in there, perhaps because the stairs and the fact that you can't see in from the street puts off the less intrepid visitors.

So how brave are you? A must is the hotpot - you are delivered a cauldron of boiling stock (normally divided into spicy and not-spicy segments) and a tray of raw ingredients which you cook yourself in the pot. The selection of fish, meat, noodles, veg, mushrooms and other bits can of course tailored to your dietary needs - though it's likely the stock isn't of purest vegetable origin... Chuck a few things in and fish them out when you're happy with how they're done. Take your time. They have recently replaced the gas burners and bottles in the tables which really hampered legroom, the new electric hotplates being way more sensible.



The regular dishes can be just as daring - fancy a plate of "Duck tongues" or "Pigs ears"? I tried them both at the same time which was a bit much. If you're in for a bit of a banquet they do a marvellous pork hock which is devilishly huge - the manager described it along the lines of "In Chinese families it's the dish we cook when the prodigal children come home from the big city".

Update: Apart from the upgraded tables (edited in above) they have also introduced ordering via laptop - which seems like a bit of a gimmick but somehow managed to deliver our starters phenomenally quickly. In combination with the hotplates I suspect we may find that the laptops have nice melty edges after a while...

Ning nang nong

It's been over a year though I've not been missing out on lunches, dinners or otherwise in the meantime... Just missing out on passing them around the gentle readers of this blog. A few recent encounters with fellow mancloggers though has given me the strength to pick up the ailing laptop and hit the keys. Let's just damn well get it out there. Thanks folks.

So... What's been happening? I'm living in a nice little flat somewhere in central Manchester (no longer time-sharing with my mum) and having a complicated old time dealing with the changes in my domestic life.

So where have I gone when things go wrong? To Ning (nang nong) on Oldham Street - which is a most wonderfully excellent Malay / Thai / Indonesian restaurant suitably bedecked with fancy wallpaper and lightfittings. I've been there a bunch of times with friends (and not easy-to-please ones at that) and apart from being conveniently near my flat is an absolutely guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Hitting the slightly-non-standard oriental boxes while being accessible (offal is in short supply here) they manage to conjure up very flavoursome food packed with more peanuts than a Marathon bar and enough chilli to make your brains explode a few times over the course of the night (not in a constant way like a vindaloo mind - contrast is the thing here).

It's popular - if you're going there on a weekend really make sure you book. I've been turned away on several occasions and squeezed in begrudgingly on a few others. On a weekday there is a bit more slack but really it's a plan worth executing with some forethought.

My favourites here, starters being a major temptation; the Gado Gado salad, the "street style" fritters (real name escapes me but they are amazing!) nicely cooked calamari, and actually just pick things at random that you've never heard of and you really can't go wrong. Vegetarians can just about get by here and they seem happy and able to do vegetarian versions of many dishes, fish and meat eaters will be very happy bunnies.

And if you really want to get stuck in they do cookery classes - the perfect gift for any special chef in your life.... I'd like a special chef...

Red Chilli

Here's one that got away - and a very nice one at that. We're back in Chinatown on Portland Street. Reassuringly Red Chilli seems to use a one-stream approach to chinese quisine so no need (as Neil Sowerby sort of said) to go for off-menu macho jackass behaviour. And best of all it's not just boring old Cantonese. When I was in there it was heaving with happy diners, mostly oriental. A good sign. Sweet Mandarin by contrast was totally British though I suppose in a very different catchment area.

For starters I had "beijing dumplings" which I have fond memories of eating far too many of when my dad's friend Chen cooked for us back home in Lancaster when I was about 7. Never seen them at a restaurant before.

Then I think for the main I had some kind of bird-nest-fish-basket thing which was pretty spicy as I remember. It was fine but I was already creaking under the weight of all those dumplings. Perhaps I should have read the rest of Neil's review and had the Lamb dish. Well worth a visit and definitely to be returned to at some point.

Sweet Mandarin

I went to a very glass-fronted place in the northern quarter (opposite the previously reviewed TNQ) called Sweet Mandarin. It looked nice enough - quite modern with nice wall-size photos of rice in fields and origami cranes instead of the washed-out paintings of pagodas and those funny gold cats with the waving arm.

The service was pretty slow. They were quite busy but not exactly heaving so not really an excuse. The food certainly passable. I started with a wanton soup which was fine - quite heavy on the sesame oil - but tasty and really not bad at all. The main course was sweet and sour king prawns. The menu enticed me with fancy names thinking that this might be a little different from your average S&SP but really it wasn't anything special. Ultimately I felt a little fobbed off by the flowery descriptions.

This didn't come cheap - but to add insult, at the end they managed to get my bill wrong to the tune of a tenner. I was not best pleased and in my ire refused to pay the service charge once they had worked it out properly.

Update: A return visit recently revealed little new of note. I went with a couple of friends and while the food was certainly passable it wasn't in the same league as the star attractions of Chinatown.

Shang-Hi and beyond

The other night a friend came over to Manchester and we went out, to a few pubs bars and one of the innumerable chinese buffet places near the flat. We had a good time - reminiscing, bitching, coming up with photographic projects involving dressing up as Batman and standing on rooftops, that kind of thing.

Shang-hi seems to be marginally classier than your average buffet. Before we got anywhere near the buffet they brought us (completely unbidden) some crispy duck with pancakes and various meaty dainties. Declare any vegetarianism at the door I suppose. Anyway it was pretty good but after a plate full of noodles and mains I felt like Mr Creosote and really couldn't eat any more despite really wanting to. I think the rule has to be that you should starve yourself for the rest of the day before going to such a place, one I had clearly neglected.

I felt distinctly queasy after the meal and was taking it pretty easy on the beers. We went to the very arty Sandbar off Oxford road (one of my mate's old haunts) and thence meandered up to the Northern Quarter. He had to get the train back to Macclesfield around 10 but after he had gone I hung about for a bit, missing one or two attempts at being pulled; first by a lady who was falling asleep and wanted help - what kind of help? a bed... I extracted myself from her arms. Then by some girls who were bothering the bouncers outside and shouted "coming with us?" when they got their taxi. I think on balance I'm just not in the space for such encounters yet. My mate thought a good shag would do me good. Perhaps one day.

New Samsi, Whitworth Street

I came in to town via Victoria which gave me the excuse to sit for a while in an armchair on the top floor of Trof - mainly blogging previous meals. They sure get excited when you ask them to do a cocktail in there, the barman was tossing Tabasco all over the place. I figured my liver would probably benefit from my stopping drinking already, headed back to the flat to get my camera and came straight back out to the New Samsi Japanese restaurant on Whitworth Street.



I've not had much proper Japanese food before but what sushi I've had, mainly from Marks and Sparks, I have greatly enjoyed. I asked for a pot of tea and perused the menu for interesting looking things. Octopus sushi. That sounds nice. And erm what else. I asked my pretty kimono-clad waitress what was good and she asked if I wanted something really Japanese, pointed down to the bottom of the menu where there was something involving pork and "sweet egg". Sadly I chickened out and went for the eggless version above it - next time I promise to be more brave.



The octopus was very thinly sliced, had suckers and wiggly bits and looked like four little works of art when delivered on their little porcelain shelf each wrapped with a little bit of rice. It seemed such a shame to hack them into their constituent parts, smear them in soy and wassabi and eat them, but that's what had to be done. The octopus was a little rubbery but then they just are aren't they.



The next course arrived and looked rather like a Viener Schnitzel. With a bit of salad on the side and some sweet sticky sauce poured over. Schnitzel are normally lean but this was proper full-fat melty pork belly inside and was very very nice. I finished my tea, took a few more photos for good measure and left feeling full and content.

Happy seasons, Chinatown

It was Sunday night - in all honesty I was still a little wonky after going out on Saturday so rather than cook the various things I had in the fridge I went out for some Chinese. I find trying to research Chinese restaurants in Manchester a very confusing business as most of the reviews seem to be either WRITTEN IN CAPITALS and/or very very short. I had better not let the side down:



HAPPY SEASONS IS A GREAT RESTAURANT IT'S NOT BIG BUT THEY HAVE REAL CHINESE PEOPLE IN THERE AND UPSET SOUNDING DANES. CHINESE PEOPLE DRINK TEA AND USE CHOPSTICKS. DANES USE KNIVES AND FORKS AND DRINK BEER. I HAD VERY GOOD SOUP WITH WANTONS IN IT AND SOME KIND OF PORK AND CABBAGE DISH.



Stop shouting for goodness sake. Thing is there are SO many restaurants I need to go to a few more to get a proper handle on where is actually good. This place certainly had a bit of not-posh charm and was indeed full of genuine Chinese people ordering a completely different sub-set of food from the westerners. Chopsticks in one hand, little spoon in the other, a big slurp of tea, and bones left scattered across the table they came in ones and twos for a quick fix or in parties for lingering conversation.

The two-stream approach does bother me a bit - like they take the same food but take the bones out if you're European. It's like having the crusts cut off the bread by a well-meaning but ultimately mis-guided parent. Call me strange but I can't stand such mollycoddlement. Next time I go to one of these places I'm going to ask for tea, get talking to the staff and see if I can get the good stuff. Rant over.



The food was pretty good really, particularly the soup which was lovely and watery and full of good things. The menu so extensive that there must have been all sorts of interesting stuff hiding in there - I was very tempted by the rather expensive scallop dishes in the seafood section at the front but think I didn't exactly do badly with the pork with preserved cabbage. It doesn't matter what culture you come from, pork and cabbage is always a winner!