Red & Hot, Manchester
10 of 14
Okay, so the menu might make for rather gruesome reading: anyone for 'pockmarked lady's tou fu with minced meat' or 'husband and wife's pork lung slices'? If you can look beyond the descriptions you'll find there's much to like about this growing Szechuan chain with branches in Manchester, Birmingham and London. Best of all is the somewhat prosaic 'sliced belly pork in mashed garlic sauce'; although served cold, it's a deeply satisfying starter. Even the 'pockmarked' tofu dish is a fiery delight.
Red & Hot, 56 Faulkner Street, Manchester M1 4FH, 0161 236 2650
latest recipes
"The mark of any decent Chinese restaurant is not necessarily the awards that it's won or its trendy interior, but whether the Chinese community eats there or not."
No it's not. That just means it's good at catering to native Chinese tastes. The corollary of this line of argument would be that a greasy fish & chip shop would be good English food because the 'English community' eat there.
When Chinese restaurants began to spread across England in the 1960´s, far and away the best were in Nelson Street in Liverpool. Immigrant Chinese got off the boat in Liverpool and were met by people who knew them. The best cooks were kept in Liverpool. The others migrated south and it was interesting to follow the trail. The second best were in Manchester, the third in Birmingham and the quality deteriorated as one continued down the country.
Since that time the English influence has resulted in a degree of over-cooking and it is now difficult to find really authentic Chinese food. That silly woman doing a program from Chinatown in Soho putting chillies in everything is destroying the image of good Chinese cooking. During forty years or so of regularly eating in Chinese restaurants before leaving England I never once tasted chillie in anything other than Mexican or Thai.
By chance I found the Lee Ho Fook restaurant in Macclesfield Street in Soho. The customers all looked Chinese so I went in. No menu, they served roast duck with rice and steamed lettuce. Heaven! I have never had anything so good anywhere.
I asked the owner of my local Chinese why he didn´t have that dish on his menu and he wanted to know where I had found it. When I told him he said "Ha, that´s where we eat when we go to London but they won´t tell us their recipe"
See the comment from "Someone".
more on msn food
Think you can stomach a grub worm? Or eat a cricket? Take a look at these edible insects and see if you could swallow one.
Full-on flavours tempt the taste buds in Natalie Coleman's sea bass with fennel and crab bonbons.
The kids will have so much fun helping out with Stacie Stewart's easy one-bowl wonder. And it's a treat the whole family will love.
It's National Sandwich Week and we've received some great entries for our Epic Sandwich competition!
We're looking for the UK's finest sarnie makers - to be judged by a celeb panel and win posh prizes!
MSN Food chats to the feisty Italian cook and comedienne Nadia G about the second series of her smash-hit cooking show, Bitchin' Kitchen.
Join Lisa Faulkner in the What's Cooking? studio and learn how to make Scotch eggs with a tasty twist - a homemade piccalilli.
Join Jean-Christophe Novelli in the What's Cooking? studio as he demonstrates how to make this classic Italian dish.
Love a decent sarnie? We've got 20 of the UK's best in celebration of National Sandwich Week. From the beefy steak sarnie to the goat slider, we've rounded up the nation's top sandwich finds.
Three French butchers have set a new record by creating what is officially Europe's longest sausage...
We flip through the menus of the most surprising cookbooks from famous foodies...
The promise of summer is in the air and, once again, the UK is home to all sorts of food events. Here’s our round-up for the coming weeks…
