Rating: 8.5/10
Telephone: 0161-236 2888
Address: 70 Portland Street, Manchester
Open: All week, noon-11pm (midnight Fri and Sat)
Price: Around £25 a head for a large meal with drinks
No wheelchair access
It is the continual complaint of those with the stamina to read restaurant columns regularly that reviewers neglect that tiny segment of the British Isles covered by the umbrella term "not London". There's something in this, of course, but the explanation has less to do with indolence and metrocentric snobbery than the failure of the much-vaunted foodie revolution to extend beyond the capital.
Take Manchester, a city I love - given its size and diversity, it should teem with interesting restaurants, yet even now the auto-response to "Manchester" in a culinary word-association exercise would be "chip buttie". Apart from a few exceptions (do write in if you know of a hidden gem) such as the French Restaurant at the Midland hotel, the city's foodie appeal rests in its Chinatown, one I much prefer to London's tourist-trappy equivalent where standards of service remain directly modelled on the Khmer Rouge Death Camp Rough Guide To Waiting On Table.
Relying on repeat business, rather than passing trade from Scandinavians who will happily eat sweet and sour traffic cone, Manchester's Chinese restaurants generally serve livelier food at half the price and twice the portions, and with better grace. Yang Sing is the one everyone knows about, but on current form the relatively obscure Red Chilli is an even better bet - though, if elegance is your thing, perhaps a wide berth is in order. To sit in the waiting area opposite a waitress obliviously kneading some unguent into her hair ... well, it's not silver service at the Dorchester. "Not sure about this one," said my friend, a veteran of restaurant disasters, as we sat in a room that contrives the traditional utilitarian gloom despite a semi-psychedelic colour scheme of mauve and terracotta. "Not sure at all."
He found little to assuage him in "the authentic menu", presented in tandem with the less scary one that rounds up the usual suspects. Pig's ear jelly sliced, stir-fried pig's intestines with cucumber and black fungus, and husband and wife lung slices were three dishes to leap off the page, but most intriguing was Sichuan Mrs Spotty bean curd. "Who is Mrs Spotty?" I asked a very sweet, camp young manager.
"She is a woman from Sichuan with many spots."
"Are you saying that this dish was invented by a leper?"
"Oh yes," he confirmed. "A leper."
Eschewing Mrs Spotty, I did order one grotesque - red-hot chilli pork stomach shreds - and we'll pass swiftly over an aesthetically displeasing dish that was both tasteless and texturally gruesome. Everything else, though, was wonderful. Beijing dumplings - eight large, plump, juicy, steamed buns filled with delicious pork and served with a good vinegar/soy sauce - were superb, as was a huge helping of fleshy salt and pepper spare ribs fried to a perfect crisp finish. We ordered a large bowl of hot and sour soup and were brought two: the Sichuan form of this classic, which was red, addictively vinegary and laced with strands of egg and bean curd (not Mrs Spotty's; the dish came without a bell); and the Beijing version, which was deep grey, suffused with seafood and flavoured with sesame oil and rice wine. Both were immaculate.
If the starters came in portions large enough for two, each main course would have fed the committee of the National Association Of Tapeworm Sufferers. A vat of shredded pork with soft noodles came with crisp French beans, and a trough of gratifyingly squidgy braised aubergines, decorated with red peppers, sat in a sweet marinade. The highlight was a pudding bowl full of spicy poached lamb, the hottest thing on the menu and a brilliant medley of good meat, fresh and dried chilli, pak choi and cabbage, all sitting in a small lake of fiery, tongue-tingling liquid that offered just the right twang of that nuclear spice, the Sichuan peppercorn.
There's a real zest here, evident both in the descriptive menus and thoughtful service, to guide punters towards the food that will please them most. We left agreeing that, for all the lack of flash, Red Chilli belongs among the best of its breed, both in Manchester and in the country, which, given the excellence of the city's Chinatown, is pretty much the same thing. If only that were so for other cuisines.
