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New Emperor

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Liam Hetherington
Liam Hetherington
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5) The New Emperor - Kung Hei Fat Choy!

5) The New Emperor - Kung Hei Fat Choy!

China - 26/01/09
According to my diary Monday 26th January was Chinese New Year. So what better opportunity to head down to Chinatown?

Manchester has the second largest Chinatown in the UK after London. It occupies a rough six-block area bounded by Portland Street, Princess Street, Mosley Street and the back to the Hotel Piccadilly. Its main thoroughfares are Nicolas Street, George Street and Faulkner Street, the latter spanned by an ornate arch in red and gold (this was once the largest Imperial arch outside China, until Liverpool erected one an entire inch taller). Remarkably, Chinatown as such really only dates from the late ‘60s. The first few restaurants paved the way for more, and associated trades also moved in – cash and carries, bakeries, bookmakers, business, social and housing associations. Likewise, the earliest businesses were predominantly Cantonese, but it has now become a hub for the larger east Asian community – principally Thai restaurants, stores and karaoke bars along Portland and Charlotte Streets. It is still a community, and 50% of the faces you are likely to see on a trip will be Chinese.

In many ways we picked the wrong day to go. We were going on Chinese New Year’s Day, rather than New Year’s Eve. And while there were major festivities planned with jugglers, acrobats, martial arts demonstrations and a lion dance, Manchester City Council had organised these for the following weekend in neighbouring Albert Square. However, the usual neon glare of Chinatown was added to by strings of lanterns zig-zagging along the streets, and a glowing red eastern dragon spiralled in the air at one corner.

There are too many establishments in Chinatown to list. I did have one very bad meal there once where it took two hours for our meals to arrive and the proprieters then tried to overcharge us by around £100. As such I tend to play safe, and I knew The New Emperor as a decent, authentic, no-frills place where I had enjoyed meals previously, so we headed there.

Inside, the New Emperor is a touch threadbare, though clean. The cavernous dining hall was busy even on a Monday night, with a good half of the diners being Chinese. There are lots of waistcoated wait staff and we were quickly seated and presented with the monster of a menu. Honestly, it is massive – and it does not even list English dishes. Chinese diners get the option of an even larger menu. We were brought bottlesof Tsingtao beer to drink while we chose.

Like most Chinese menus, it suffers from ‘the blight of the banquet’ to a certain extent. The first five or six pages all listed different permutations of set meals. I tend to find these a lowest common denominator of cuisine and genrally uninspiring. The five of us were no strangers to Chinese cuisine, so we worked out that we would be happy just ordering a starter and a main from the menu.

Starters run the whole gamut from soups to dim sum to shredded duck pancakes. One chap actually ordered a quarter duck. A big chunk of bird, roast until it was almost purple, was brought over, and the waiter expertly shredded it with forks before us. Both Paul and I went for Hot & Sour Soup. This is pretty much our acid test of a meal. We know where to get very good hot & sour soup, and so we were comparing the broth to that at our usual Thai restaurant. And it was perfectly fine. Not the best we had ever had, but certainly not bad. (In fact the only complaint we could make was that the waitress had muddled up our orders and originally only brought out one bowl, to Paul’s distress!).

The options for main courses include more duck, chicken, beef, pork, lamb, fish, seafood, tofu… Pretty much anything, cooked in a wide variety of ways. We were brought vast tureens of boiled and fried rice to accompany whatever we ordered – we got nowhere near emptying them. I ordered pork char siu. I was surprised by quite how much meat was produced (I had to beg the other guys to help me out). The slices of barbecued meat were thoroughly red throughout – a worrying sign that food colouring had probably been used. However it was very nice and you could taste the distinctive honey, hoi sin and soy sauce.

When it came to the bill we were able to chip in roughly £20.00 each – this was for two courses and a couple of bottles of beer each (obviously roast duck for starter costs more than soup). Not a bad deal. The worst we can say is that our waitress forgot to bring one of the soups and was a bit slow noticing us when we tried to order more drinks. But other than that the New Emperor cemented itself in my estimation as a good-standard authentic Cantonese restaurant with tasty and decently-priced cuisine, and it is on that basis that I recommend it to any visitors. Kung hei fat choy!

(The most famous Chinese restaurant in Manchester is undoubtedly the Yang Sing on Princess Street. This is one of Manchester’s most historic Cantonese restauarants, and sets the standard for a high-class dining experience. The Yang Sing is where Cabinet ministers take people when they are in the city for party conferences. I have never been, though I have visited its younger sibling the Little Yang Sing, which I found very stylish – think the opening Shanghai nightclub scene from ‘Temple Of Doom’. Also in Chinatown, friends have recommended Red Chilli on Portland Street for fiery Szechuan cuisine. Away from Chinatown The Rice Bowl on Cross Street and Sweet Mandarin tucked away on Copperas Street in the Northern Quarter all come recommended. And when I’m home with my parents the Wing Wah on Old Crofts Bank Road near Davyhulme Circle is our Chinese takeaway of choice.)

From journal Around the World in 80 Meals! (part 1)

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