Red Chilli

I took my parents along here when they came to visit me as they love Chinese food — what I forgot however was that my mum really only likes curry. After some pleading with her to expand her horizons we got some really fantastic food to share between us all. We opted for the chilli mutton, peanut and chilli chicken and Cantonese style chicken along with rice, noodles and wantons.
What we weren’t prepared for was the amount of food, my housemates loved this as I brought home enough food to feed them twice over! All in seriously delicious, super quick and attentive service. If I’m back I’ll definitely be splitting a main course!

It tastes really great, but the waiter is not very friendly.

Enjoyed two meals in this restaurant during our 3-​day trip in Manchester, plus two take-​outs. Strongly recommend the Hot Poached in Chili Oil (水煮牛肉). I’m from west China and this dish reminds me of hometown restaurants.

Upon revisiting this establishment after several months I find the situation as before: Good, often great authentic Chinese food coupled with alternately indifferent and incompetent service. The faces of the waitresses betray not a single emotion when they’re dealing with the guests (observe the difference when they’re talking to each other!), and they couldn’t care less if you liked your food of not.
Obviously, Chinese establishments *never* read online reviews or just don’t give a crap. Still, the great food always triumphs over the poor service.

Quick, efficient, tasty is how we summed this one up. Patronized by a majority of Asian customers, some seemingly well heeled so I figured we did not do bad at all with this selection.

This is the best Chinese restaurant I’ve eaten at in the UK. I’m a Chinese Australian who loves his dumplings and Northern style food.
The people running this are from Beijing and cook in the Northern Chinese style.
Do yourself a favour, don’t go the usual sweet and sour pork etc.
Get a serving of boiled dumplings, spring onion pancake, and zha jiang mian. My wife and I stuffed ourselves silly and were sad to leave in the knowledge that we’ve yet to find anything similar in terms of authentically great Northern Chinese food in London.

Excellent Chinese food. I’m not a huge fan of Chinese food either but this was so good. I got the beef with mushrooms and it was spicy and tasty. I would recommend sharing a dish between 2 – 3 people though. They are massive dishes. We ordered extra sides assuming they would be smaller sized. We regretted that since we had lots of leftover pak choi and squid. I wouldn’t recommend the Pak Choi because it was salty or garlicky enough for my taste.

They don’t like you. Unbelievable. Why be in the restaurant business if you don’t like people who come through your doors? We’ll forget about the topsy turvy servy I can take rude service but the food was sooooo salty I’m still drinking water. When you try to talk to them? Well, they know what they are doing and what they are doing is taking the piss.

Great food but very poor service. Waitstaffs were somewhere between inpatient and flat out rude. Tried both dine in and take out and the service was bad enough to ruin the overall experience. Here’s an example, got my take out bag and the waitress didn’t even put any utensils in. Luckily I thought of it, asked for it and she impatiently threw them in there, no word, no apologies or anything, only a dirty look as if I’ve done something wrong. I like their food but not enough to be treated like I owe them something. Definitely going to try other Chinese places in the area before ever considering coming back.

Sadly the much raved about crab soup seems to have been stripped from the menu, so my menu selection was off to a bad start.
The food was excellent in the main except for a couple of minor disappointments — the crispy rice was rightly likened to rice crispier and led to a slight lack of side dishes, while the pork belly was delicious but the fact I can still taste the abundance of gelatinous fat 5 days later would put me off a repeat performance.
As far as recent Chinese meals go though it was up there among the best, and I would certainly return to sample some more of the extensive menu.
Aside from the few food related let downs, the waiter was a bit of a wanker and more than mildly unhelpful when one of my fellow diners asked for some advice.

Great night out here with the Unilocal crew. Definitely the best Chinese I have had in Manchester (save Tai Pan for dim sum) and good value for the generous portions. We tried I think nearly all Szechuan dishes. I had salt & pepper soft shell crab which was salty but not in a bad way, and beautifully spiced and fried. My favourite dish of the evening, however, was the eel which I was reluctant to bring near my mouth initially but I am so glad I listened to Mike and did because it was fantastic — a strong but not too rich or very fishy flavour and some delicious oily sauce that did great a great job interacting with my last bits of rice. Everything was so good though, the tofu with minced beef was a big favourite (I think the secret is the seasoning which I believe was Sichuan peppercorns), the Schuan noodle soup was an enormous vat of comfort food, gong bao chicken was sweet peanutty comfort food and the pork belly was beautifully cooked (and a massive portion). Only thing to note is that the crispy rice is not that great as an accompaniment, crisping it means it’s not very substantial.
I would definitely recommend and look forward to going back here to try the fried chicken with chilli.

The restaurant has reasonable rates and an excellent menu. They had two menus, one for specials and another regular dinner menu. Almost everything sounded appealing and most of the dishes had accompanying photos as well, which was actually really helpful deciding what I wanted.
The wait staff here were a little suffocating as I was sitting trying to determine what to order but helpful none the less.
I ordered a dish with duck and bean sprouts (not sure what it was called) but it was quite tasty but a tad salty. The boiled rice helped minimize the salt issue though.
Just an FYI… I had asked if they had wifi but unfortunately they do not. So if you are visiting and desperately need wifi, don’t come here because they don’t.
Overall it was a pretty good dining experience and I recommend it as a place to try if you find yourself looking for Chinese food in city centre Manchester.

This has to be my very favourite restaurant in Manchester. I’ve been going for probably ten years and have always had good food. It’s almost a shame that it’s so good as it sometimes stops me trying somewhere new.
As the name (and many of the reviews) suggest, the food can be very spicy. But it doesn’t have to be. Some of my favourites have been the slow roast pork and the lamb and coriander.
There is a lot of offal (things like duck tongue) and things like frogs legs. Great if you want to chow off. I don’t know if you’d get better service if you were Chinese but the service I’ve had has always been great.
One tip if you do go — they have sliced potatoes with chilli which are a taste sensation.

Went looking for hot food on a rainy afternoon and Red Chilli didn’t disappoint! I was advised to try the spicy poached mutton and the Spring Onion bread. I ordered both and wondered why the waitress looked at me strangewhen the food arrived I understood why, there was enough to comfortably feed 2 or 3 people and try as I might, I had to leave half the bread behind and a good portion of the broth, which was a little too salty for my liking. Price wise it was very reasonable and I didn’t need to eat for the rest of the day, so if there’s a couple don’t be too eager to order lots of dishes unless you’re taking your appetite with you!

I count it was the first Szechwan restaurant in Manchester. It was a fantastic restaurant for the people who is crazy for the spicy Chinese food. Some one like me! I would like give them a 5 stars if they can keep the food taste like first year, but they didn’t. Whatever, I have been there many many times. It full of my good memories when I was studying in Manchester. Poached seabass in Hot Chili Oil and Fried Bun (It isn’t Szechwan Style I guess) are always my favourite.
We parked our car in the public parking in the center of China Town. There are many gay bars near there. You may want to try if you got time. Good luck!

Definitely a place to go for Chinese food as they have the chinese restaurant atmosphere and a blazing hot cuisine.
I love the food there especially the crispy aromatic duck.
Until last year they had the Halal sign there so sometimes I went with my Muslim friends there for a bit.
What I’ve experience is that if you are speaking Chinese, you tend to get better treatment. However there was once when we went for the set deal and I asked whether they had pork in their mixed soup, they said no but it does have meat in it.
My Muslim friend ordered that but when it arrived, i noticed that it has luncheon in it which was pork. I called the staff to enquire about it but she was very persistent in defending herself saying that she did say there was meat in it. I told her I specifically asked her if there was pork in it since the menu did not specify what was in a soup.
In the end, she gave in. Took it back and gave us a ‘new’ one which didn’t took long. I assume she might had just removed the luncheon from it and gave us back the same bowl.
My friend decided to take away his portion of noodles as he couldn’t finish it. While the staff were packing it, we heard a loud bang in the kitchen, presuming one of the staff dropped something. My friend jokingly said I hope that wasn’t mine.
It turned out that it was and his noodles came packed with ½ of what was suppose to be there.
Service wise, not so friendly except maybe when you pay as they can earn tips there. Food is great though.

It’s a spicy place as the name may suggest. Buried in the heart of Chinatown (well at least as far as I could figure it out), this is a mostly underground restaurant. There are two in Manchester, the Portland Street one being smaller but very central.
Main downside of this one is that they don’t serve the Beijing Roast Duck due to size limitations. Looking around, I wasn’t sure how size was an issue in this large restaurant but I’ll take them at their word.
We started with the crispy aromatic roast duck which was a bit dry for my tastes but the flavour was quite good. The hoisin sauce was quite tasty and not overpowering as some places will make it and the duck made an excellent first course.
For our mains, we shared Jade fried rice (fried rice with egg and tiger prawns), Gungbao chicken (think kung pao chicken for us westerners), and hot spicy poached beef. The rice was fantastic and I could have easily made a meal of it. The Gungbao chicken was also bursting with flavour and had a great mix of textures with the tender chicken, crunchy peanuts, and spicy chillies. The poached beef was interesting and a bit too oily for my tastes, but great in small quantities.
The portions were massive and the three of us couldn’t finish more than half the food. Definitely a place to go for dinner and take it home for the next two lunches.
The waitstaff are very friendly, all seem to speak Chinese (so you can make your Chinese friend do all the ordering for authenticity), and bring you food in humungous portions. What’s not to like about this place?
Overall, for the price and atmosphere, I like it to satisfy my chinese cravings. Hopefully they do takeaway too!

You know how you have ‘thinking people’s crumpet’? Well, this is the thinking person’s Chinatown restaurant. It’s not the one that gets shouted about, but it is the one that people like on the sly. And it’s not just a clever name either — this one isn’t for the faint-​hearted, as some of the dishes are tongue-​tinglingly spicy and rather authentic. Hey, don’t think just because you aren’t in Rusholme that you won’t get your head blown off. Oriental spices can pack even more powerful a punch.
As well as the menu being traditional Szechuan, it’s also… somewhat creative. Yes, everyone chucks something crazy on a menu from time to time, Dough has its all day breakfast and banana pizza toppings, but frog’s legs in a Chinese restaurant? Well, in this one, yes. I don’t tend to eat creatures with legs, unless you count prawns and those are more miniature tentacles than anything else, which also gets me round the issue of crab and squid. Not the most logical argument, but I love frogs far too much as creatures to eat them. Meanwhile if you don’t like the look of that you can always opt for innards. Husband and Wife’s Lungs anyone? A dish that sounds more like it should be served up at Hannibal Lecter’s gaff than in Chinatown.
Well, bullet point number one — quite a few diners are indeed Chinese. Brownie bonus. We can also tick off an extensive menu as well, something I dread but hey, that’s a generic Chinese restaurant thing, I won’t whinge about my indecisiveness. That’s my cross to bear. But the food really is delicious. The crab soup is moreish and the little extras like dumplings and spring rolls are divine. It’s also stupidly cheap (in the nicest possible way) as the portions are gargantuan, the cost per head only around a tenner and they even give you doggy bags if you can’t finish. Cold Chinese the next morning for breakfast? Could I BE any more American?
I love it. But you’ll need a lot of water and a dining companion that doesn’t dance around replicating one of Kasabian’s recent musical offerings. #I’m on fiiiiii-​iiiiii-​re…#

In my final year of uni I moved back into halls and was put in a flat including two rather quiet Chinese girls. In an attempt to socialise with them, myself and my other flatmates decided to organise a flat meal. We were going to go for an Indian, but they didn’t do Indian… or anything but Chinese, so we just asked them to take us to their favourite place to eat. We ended up at Red Chilli, which is just on the edge of Chinatown and a 5 minute walk from Piccadilly. This branch seems a lot more authentic than the more sophisticated looking restaurant with the same name on the Oxford Road.
I’m not a huge fan of Chinese food. It sometimes gives me migraines due to the high level of MSG. However, the food at Red Chilli was spot on. It wasn’t too oily like I found a lot of the food in China to be.
I don’t really know what I had. The Chinese girls ordered loads of veggie dishes (I am veggie, and the others had been put off Chinese meat by the Chinese housemates who boiled chicken feet ²⁴⁄₇) which were put on one of those cool spinny tables that we could rotate, so that we could try a bit of everything.
The meal cost £5 each including green tea, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than the prices on the menu. Word of advice — if you know a Chinese person who can speak Chinese then get them to come along with you and do a deal with them! Just make sure they don’t order you the pig intestines, unless you’re into that kind of thing!

I love this Chinese and its located really centrally so its handy if your going for a bite to eat before venturing out on the town.
Red Chillis mission is to enchance your experience in Chinese food, looking after your pocket, stomach and soul and it certainly does this!
All of the staff have been trained in 5* hotels and cook up the most amazing Chinese dishes. The interior is very contemporary yet the restaurant still has a traditional feel to it.
I would recommend you book in advance as this place packs out at the weekend. Definitely Worth every penny and a real treat any day of the week :)