REVIEW: Sweet Mandarin | Northern Quarter

IF LISA Simpson were a restaurant she’d be Sweet Mandarin. Overachiever and proud of it.

I am full of admiration for everything the Tse sisters have achieved, but it seems that with all their other commitments, business ventures and multiple revenue streams the food has been forgotten.

In the ten years it's been open, Sweet Mandarin has (deep breath): gained an AA rosette, won the Best Local Chinese Restaurant on Gordon Ramsay’s F Word, got backing from the Dragon’s Den, launched a line of eponymous sauces, run a cookery school and naturally there is the Sweet Mandarin Cookbook. Talk about diversifying revenue streams.

Add to that the fact that Sweet Mandarin is co-owned by twin sisters, Helen and Lisa Tse, both of whom were awarded MBEs for services to the food and drink sector this year, plus their younger sister Janet. Helen Tse is also a Cambridge-educated lawyer who still runs her own law firm and, amazingly, is the first British-born Chinese author. Has there really never been a BBC author before 2007? I can’t find any evidence of one from my in-depth research (ten hard minutes on the googleface). That is pretty astonishing.

I picked up a copy of Helen’s memoir, also called Sweet Mandarin, and it’s a good read (any book with a chapter named Chips, Chips, Chips has my vote). Almost as long as a memoir is Sweet Mandarin’s menu, which displays the same writerly touches. The inspirational little paragraphs describing each dish might be an irritant for those who want to get straight down to eatin’ business and are not interested in ‘the journey’, but for me it had the intended effect - I genuinely wanted to try almost every dish on the menu.

Sweet Mandarin

On the other hand, the menu also proudly boasts a photo of the sisters with Prime Minister David Cameron and the Premier of China, Li Keqiang - Sweet Mandarin catered for the Premier’s official state visit in June of this year. The mind boggles – what did they serve? Aromatic crispy protester for Premier Li? A dish of sweet chilli benefits claimant with a side of egg-fried Europhile for the PM to 'chillax' with?

Actually, there's actually a page of the menu devoted to the sisters’ trip to Downing Street, so if you want to dine like Dave this is your chance. It’s mostly chicken based.

Less politically divisive are the range of cocktails inspired by the Chinese zodiac (£6.95 each). Again I wanted to try them all, but sense prevailed and we stuck to three. I started with a Rooster, a strawberry-pineapple combo that tasted exactly like a cola cube. Sheep tasted like shampoo. A jolly nice pear-flavoured alcoholic shampoo, but shampoo nonetheless. The Horse cocktail was basically a rather nice cosmopolitan, though I can’t in all conscience recommend readers go out and get wrecked on Horse, just in case someone gets the wrong idea.

A complimentary dish of prawn crackers gave us a chance to sample the Sweet Mandarin sauces which so impressed those Dragons (shame they choose to dine instead in San Carlo and Artisan, who as far as I know don’t have their own range of sauces). They were very good, especially the barbeque, which didn’t taste of fake smoke like so many do.

Mabel's Claypot Chicken

Smseabass

Our first starter, salt and chilli squid (£6.95, starters pictured main image) was the dish touted as winning The F Word. Perhaps the Tse sisters used up their lifetime supply of salt and chilli on old Gordon because there wasn’t much kick to be found here, just some flaccid pieces of squid in floury batter (a sure sign the fryer is not hot enough). Equally beige and lifeless were the wasabi king prawns (£13.95), lumpy protein nuggets deep-fried and doused in what can only be described as a vaguely spicy custard. Wasabi is meant to steam clean your nasal passages not barely tickle your tastebuds.

Honey soya glazed chicken wings (£9.95) were also disappointing, with watery flesh and elastic skin. I gave up half-way through chewing one, truly a bad sign. Mabel’s Claypot Chicken (£10.95) was the most interesting dish we ordered. Combining chicken, mushrooms, lap cheung sausage, it was delicately flavoured. So if you like your Chinese cuisine more subtle than Sichuan, this is a dish for you. I’m more of a Hunan girl myself.

We also ordered the Fish of the Day (£16.95), which turned out to be sea bass (when is it not sea bass? How I long for the FotD to be lionfish or swamp eel one day). This was firm and well cooked, a nice piece of fish served in a strangely fatty stock on a few limp pieces of pak choi. Again I could have gone for a bit more general oomph.

I can believe that in its best days Sweet Mandarin has been a fine addition to both the Northern Quarter and Manchester’s Chinese food ‘offer’ (hideous word but seems appropriate here). But those days are not right now.

I am full of admiration for everything the Tse sisters have achieved, but it seems that with all their other commitments, business ventures and multiple revenue streams the food has been forgotten. It would only take a small shift to get things going again. A bit more heat, both in cooking temperature and spice level, would make all the difference. I hope Sweet Mandarin finds its groove again. In the meantime I’ll read the book and buy the sauces.

ALL OUR SCORED FOOD REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL. REVIEW VISITS ARE UNANNOUNCED AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF ANY COMMERICAL RELATIONSHIP.

Sweet Mandarin, 19 Copperas St, Manchester M4 1HS, 0161 832 8848

Rating 9/20

Food: 3/10 (salt & chilli squid 2/10, wasabi prawns 2/10, chicken wings 2/10, Mabel’s chicken 4/10 sea bass 4/10)

Service: 3/5

Ambience: 3/5