The Vittles Guide to Manchester’s Chinatown
Our pick of places to eat in Manchester’s compact but rich Chinatown. Words by Lisa and Helen Tse.
Welcome to the Vittles Chinatowns Project. In this guide, Lisa and Helen Tse share their pick of restaurants in Manchester’s Chinatown, serving the UK’s largest Chinese population. Cantonese cuisine still reigns supreme, but new openings offering Gansu specialities and hot pot are helping to keep the community alive.
You can read the rest of the project here:
Who is Chinatown for?, by Xiao Ma
The New Chinatowns, by Barclay Bram
Crying in Wing Yip, by various
The Vittles Guide to London’s Chinatowns, by various
The Vittles Guide to the UK’s Chinatowns (including individual guides to Birmingham, Liverpool, Cambridge and Glasgow), by various
Manchester’s Chinatown is compact – just half a square mile bounded by Moseley, Charlotte, Princess and Portland Streets, with the grand Imperial Chinese arch at its heart, a gift from China and a reminder of the old Sino-British textile trade that built this city. The food has shifted over the years: what was once solidly Cantonese now runs hot with Sichuan peppercorns and the vinegary punch of northern noodle joints. Stalwarts like Kwok Man and Hong Kong have closed, but things are shifting back as new waves of Hong Kong immigrants arrive, bringing with them the sweet-savoury char siu and the crackle of roast pork belly. Old Chinese acupuncture clinics sit beside new Taiwanese bubble tea stalls; herbalists who’ve been grinding the same remedies for forty years share a wall with hot-pot joints where university students queue for numbing broth.
During the pandemic, Manchester became home to the UK’s largest Chinese population, accounting for 3.4% of the national total. The rents may be brutal, and the economic headwinds real, but the community holds. This is not a Chinatown that performs for tourists. It just cooks, day after day, better than it has any right to. If you come hungry, you’ll eat things you’ve never heard of, cooked by people who’ve been doing it longer than you’ve been alive, and it will absolutely ruin you for anywhere else.
Only Yu Cantonese
The lift’s often broken, so the first test at Only Yu is the stairs. If you can manage two flights, you’ll be rewarded. Only Yu is run by two chefs and two front-of-house pros who’ve spent decades making other people’s restaurants great. Now they’re doing it for themselves, and you can taste the creative freedom. Red rice seafood cheung fun is a love letter to innovation that’s studded with prawns and scallops, every bite luxurious and silky. Charcoal har gau sounds gimmicky, but it’s packed with prawn mousse, while the Ibérico cha siu is so fatty and soft, you’ll forget where you are for a moment. This is a place you’ll climb for again.
1st Floor, Connaught Building, 58 George St, M1 4HF
Chef Diao Cantonese/dim sum
Chef Diao has been cooking for more than thirty-five years, and it’s evident in every dish. He knows dim sum and hand-pulled noodles like the back of his hand, with an instinct only decades of repetition can give. In Manchester, where good dim sum is expected, Chef Diao still manages to stand out. Har gau skins are paper-thin, the filling plump and sweet. The siu mai have that perfect ratio of pork to prawn, which makes you immediately want to order another round, while the noodles are springy and irregular, each strand carrying effort and care. Chef Diao’s food reminds you why dim sum takes years to master.
92–94 Oldham St, M4 1LJ
After the paywall: a late-night Cantonese spot offering beef brisket and wonton noodles; monster portions of baked pork chop rice; and a Gansu restaurant with some of the best noodles in the city.