Red Chilli, 70-72 Portland Street, Manchester (0161 236 2888).
Meal for two, £40
It was when they began extending the table that we knew for sure we had over-ordered. I can't apologise, though. The menu at Red Chilli, in Manchester's Chinatown, is so unusual, so packed full of weirdy-sounding treasures, it demanded to be properly explored. Or at least the main menu did. There is another menu at Red Chilli, stuffed full of the kind of dull, grimly familiar Cantonese dishes you could fall asleep while eating - but you would have to be a complete ladyboy to order from that one.
You will want the 'spicy menu', because Red Chilli specialises in the food of Sichuan and Beijing, where heat reigns supreme. Some of the dishes have names so mellifluous and alluring they could be arranged as a work of found poetry: there's Hot Wok Trotter or Husband and Wife lung slices; Sichuan Mrs Spotty's beancurd or Blessed the Whole Family; Poet Dung-bo roast pork or lucky prawn cakes; silver fungus and winter melon soup.
We didn't try any of those, as it happens - we took the advice of our waiter and went elsewhere. This is one of the pleasures of Red Chilli. Once the staff know you're up for it they display a marked enthusiasm and an acute knowledge of their menu. This shouldn't be a rarity in Chinese restaurants but, sadly, it is. Under our waiter's guidance we ordered the innocent-sounding spicy hot poached lamb, which is a house speciality. It produced a huge steaming bowl of rich, meaty, chilli-spiked broth, laden with thin slices of very tender lamb, handfuls of fresh chopped coriander, sliced spring onions, minced garlic, braised lettuce and leeks. It was a genuinely thrilling dish.
Stir-fried eel slices with red chilli brought dark, sticky but meaty chunks of the fish, with a sudden lift of fire at the end. A clay pot casserole of poached pork belly and vermicelli seemed at first a little bland by comparison. The pork was sliced very thinly, and was as pale as the white glassy noodles. But the liquor had a depth of flavour worthy of the Pacific ocean, which was helped by the presence of tripe slices buried deep within. And it never seemed to run out of pork.
The most exotic of our dishes was the stir-fried pig's intestines with Chinese black pudding which, despite its name, arrived as another soupy casserole. There are whole categories of Chinese food based mainly on texture (or absence of it) and this is one of those. The slices of pig's innards had the fine, musky farmyard back-taste of andouillettes (if you've eaten it, you'll know what I mean), but mostly it was about smoothness and slipperiness. Chinese black pudding, it appeared to me, was simply cubes of soft, jelly-like congealed pig's blood. Stop grimacing at the back there; if you haven't eaten it, you just don't know. The least unusual dish was the Sichuan smoked duck, which was just a very good (if unsmoky) version of aromatic crispy duck with pancakes. Mind you, our waiter told us exactly this when we ordered it, so it's our fault. The crispy, salty skin was fantastic.
Pricing is absurd for the volume and the quality. No dish we ordered cost more than £10, most were £7.50 and three would have been enough between two. That said, they're clearly making money, because they've just opened a second branch in Leeds. I would love to receive reports from any readers who have the good sense to make the journey. It's worth it.
