Manchurian Legends

This has quickly become our favourite China Town restaurant. The menu is original and gives a really good choice. It would be a shame to come here and order a set meal. The food was perfectly prepared and efficiently delivered. A down-to-earth, rather than fancy, restaurant -but all the better for that. Watch the bill, though. Service Charge was added to the bill, but the credit card machine still asked if I wanted to leave a tip. This is something that seems to happen at a lot of China Town restaurants. A really enjoyable meal which has totally spoiled me for my local chinese restaurants.

The menu is huge and pretty inaccessible and the interior is not particularly glamorous but if you stick to the recommendations above of the wonderfully spicy lamb skewers and the great chicken plate you will not be disappointed. A welcome change to the dim sum and standard menu's that chinatown has become synonymous with.

The food is great and we are going there again. They are very authentic and my friend was born in Manchuria and she loves it and she said that it makes her feels at home. One important thing that you never do in most chinese or manchurian restaurant, do not order wine . Ask for chinese tea because firstly they do not know much about wine and secondly it does not goes with chinese , japanese or manchurian food, unless you are having about rice wine / sake. Do not try if you are not adventurous enough. They serve food like intestines, frog legs, chicken heart, pork jelly, kidney..... I can only go there with my chinese friend and will never take my english husband there because he will never appreciate the real chinese cooking. Most westerners only can appreciate things like perking ducks, stir fry beef or chicken, ..... some dumplings....

Moved here from Taiwan and went here with the Mrs. The food, when we went for lunch, was actually really good. The service was really good, as well (though, the waitress was from nearby Fujian in China, so perhaps there was an element of commonality that resulted in better service?). It isn't a fancy restaurant, but we weren't let down when we went and it met our expectations.

Utterly utterly average in every respect. Time Out has seriously lost credibility with me in giving the best cheap eats award to this restaurant. The food was greasy and overcooked, the bare 100w lightbulbs shine directly in your eyes and the service ranged from slow to arthritic. The much mooted (54) braised pork with glass noodle was the biggest let-down of all, lumps of pork fat swimming in a weird flavourless gloop. If I wanted a cheap chinese I'd just go to one of the "duck pancake" places nearby, at least then my expectations would be met. Having eaten at all the Timeout cheap eats runners up recently this is by far the worst in every respect. Ariana II, Kao Sarn and Meza are all fantastic, quality food, great atmosphere and bustling service. Shame.

I don't even think this restuarant deserves one star. The most appalling service, the most over priced and disgusting chablis I have ever drunk, literally tasted like a £1.99 bottle of lambrini (I still remember the taste from a mispent childhood...!). Then the food. Oh, dear. Replusive. We left after our starters and still managed to pay about £80 for the wine and a few starters between four people. We were so disgusted with everything we felt compelled to tell the customers walking in, catergorically to turn back. I took two members of my staff here and was frankly embarassed and ashamed. All off the back of a TimeOut review, I wish I had read the user ones first...

I'm utterly confused by all the negative comments. Ate here the other day and every dish was delicious. Particularly good was the aubergine with pork-this dish is usually very greasy with too-mushy aubergines but here they were lovely, soft with a nice perfectly charred crunchy edge. Dumplings are outstanding-the kind little old chinese ladies make at home (and different style but in quality like my Beijing-born chef friend makes with his family every Sunday). They are perfect size, super tasty, with exactly right chewiness to the wrapping. Red braised pork with glass noodle Also excellent. And genuinely cheap for this quality- my friend and I paid £60 for enough food for four (we each got full breakfasts as well out of what we could not finish) Plan to go back tonight. The negative reviews are just mystifying!

My opinion? Ignore the reviews below and go and try it for yourself. I think this place is fantastic and wonder honestly whether some of these reviewers shouldn't just stick to eating at places like Ping Pong where they can get the kind of slick, Westernised bullshit food and service they feel they can handle. Firstly the skewers here are the bomb! Chicken hearts, pork belly and chicken wings grilled until just crisp and then rolled in a chill and cumin combination like some kind of ingenious adult lolly. And the dumplings. These are the real deal. Made from a Northern style boiling water dough they are thick and chewy and served with a scarily addictive dipping sauce. If you want prissy little dumplings in a steamer basket go elsewhere. If you want China's answer to perogies look no further. Order at least two kinds - you WILL eat them all. Onto the mains, I've tried the chicken on the bone with tree mushrooms, pork slices in 'extremely spicy soup', the aubergine with minced pork, and the pork belly with glass noodles and there is nothing bland or flavourless about any of it. In fact I went with a die hard Chinese food lover who has been eating at Bar Shu religiously two to three times a week for a year and he declared Manchurian Legends as 'more authentic and less dumbed down' than Bar Shu. Maybe that's the issue. People read a review by Jay Rayner, decide because they've eaten some tosh at their local Cantonese or at Ping Pong (sorry to bash the place but it's pretty lame) that they are authorities on Chinese food and then when Manchu hits them in the face with their spicy, picky, cumin scented dishes laced with chill oil, they run screaming in the opposite direction and decide to write a bad review. You like your meat with bones, your vegetables with char and your dumplings with chewy, glutinous goodness - hightail it to Manchu. Otherwise go eat your Lemon Chicken balls and leave this place in peace!

Time Out has seriously lost credibility with me in giving the best cheap eats award to this restaurant. The food is horrible and we did not finish any of our dishes. Definitely will not go back here. It is rare for me to leave a restaurant hungry but it really was that bad!

I just want to add to the below bad reviews and urge Time Out to review this wildly inaccurate rating! I read great reviews about this place and 10 friends and I decided to visit - not one dish of the many we ordered (and we seriously over-ordered) was any good and everyone left disappointed. If you are reading this then ignore the other customer reviews and take Time Out's view AT YOUR PERIL! Don't go.