Manchurian Legends

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.

1 star as 0 stars are not possible. Really bad food. Too salty, too greasy, not enough sauce. Don't eat 94. You get some fatty beef-like stripes in the form of noodle. No beef taste, not hot, no sauce, lack of beef flavor. Dumplings were pretty tasteless. Don't go there, avoid! The extra 10% service charge are for nothing. Starters arrived after mains, one main arrived after all other guest have finished. Poor service. I am so disappointed I went there.

It was 10pm when we decided to dine in manchurian legends, but we were turn away by the manageress, as she said they were closing up, only take away service is available.
Then We ordered takeaway from the restaurant, but the food was low quality chinese. The rice was not fresh, the lamb skewers was uncooked, there was still blood in it.Quite disappointed with it, not as good as I expect.

Just had dinner at Manchurian Legends.
We wrote down the numbers from the review above, and from Jay Rayner's review in the Guardian, and ordered based on their recommendations, as we would otherwise been lost in the large menu. The food was fabulous. Some of the best Chinese we;ve ever had. The prices were very reasonable (huge and delicious dinner, with drinks came to 25 pounds each). The service was attentive and charming. The decor, whilst a little strange, had some nice touches: the photos.
I'll certainly return, often.
Can't think why others had such a bad time.

The dumplings was THE WORST! as it taste extremely similar to the frozen ones I get from a chinese supermarket.The pork belly glass noodle dish was bland and greasy.
Im not expecting a five star service, of course most of us never come here expecting lots of attention. but the head waitress particularly, is very very rude, When asking for a napkin, she threw it at me! I was so shocked about this attitude!!

Why the waiters and waitress are extremely moody and rude?It was stated on the bill "10% service ", so may I know "what service ?"

Agreed with the consistently bad reviews below. We had to wait over 30 min for the food and they arrived either cold or lukewarm. Service was awful. This restaurant is a disgrace to Dongbei cuisine.

Unfortunately, this was one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had.
I have never written review before but I wish the owner or the manager could read this.
First of all, I’m a Malaysian Chinese, went there about 3or 4 weeks ago. The karaoke room was on the third floor but we had to go to the first floor to get our drinks, because the waiter was not around-all the time!
It was very rushed and the waitress has been very rude when asking her questions about the menu. she was unable to tell us what we ordered and how much it was.What was particularly shocking was that this waitress seemed to be in some sort of manager's position.
I heard they were talking about us behind our back-saying we are fussy,difficult to deal with!(Unfortunately, I understand mandarin) how rude!!!
Never ever go there again.

Why oh why did I ignore the below comments about Manchurian Legends.

I excitedly read the Time Out review above, then read the one star ratings, hesitated, then decided to go.

What a mistake.

My friend nearly spat out the acidic house wine which we sent back. My friends and I will drink anything. We have never sent a bottle back before. The spare ribs were cold on the inside. When we informed the waiter he looked puzzled and asked what we wanted to do with the ribs, "Bring us some cooked ones??" we chimed. The rest of the meal was pretty rubbish. Oh and they snuck a service charge on the final bill.

Time Out, you may need to review the Award...

I really don’t get how this place won TimeOuts best new cheap restaurant. We went a few weeks back and it was probably the worst meal I’ve had this year. I felt so bad for dragging my friend out in the rain for greasy, flavourless, and at times, downright nasty food.

We ordered a pancake, some lamb skewers, cold aubergines in garlic, potato strips and bowl of beef stew with potato. Staples of Northern China.
The pancake came out in pool of oil which was on the turn. We left the aubergines which were unedible, it was just like eating some chopped up garlic with copious amounts of salt and some old aubergines. The lamb skewers had heat from the pile of dry chilli flakes but lacked any flavour. The beef stew was just a filler by the time it came out – 30 mins after everything else.

For all its marketing, I would say less than quarter of its menu comes from Dongbei or Northern China if that, the rest is actually from Sichuan or bog standard China town fair i.e. Cantonese.

this place was great... before it got a rave review from time out, now the service is just awful.

Sometimes it's with what attitude you approach a restaurant, and how well you order that dictates what your experience is like. And this is not coincidental: if you've not bothered to research the menu and are not patient with a simple, canteen-style restaurant, then you often get what your effort merits...

For that price you are not paying for the level of service that accompanies more 'designed', or high end and (often/sometimes) bland restaurants. If they actually engaged with the staff at Manchurian legends, asked questions, and read a few reviews I think many of the complainants here would have had a significantly more rewarding experience. With a restaurant like Manchurian legends, it is often what you put in that dictates what you get out - which can be superb.

This past weekend, I dined out this restaurant and experienced really poor service.
The food was cold, waiter forgot the drinks - we had to go to the bar and get them ourselves, they never came to get the dirty plates but still charged us full price for the service! They were loud, shouting to each other or just hanging around without doing anything.
I’m pretty sure that I would never go back again.
AVOID!!

Terribly disappointed!Food was cold and oily.Staff ignored us despite repeated attempts to get their attention. they seems do not understand any English at all. I have no idea why a 4 star rating was given!

Extremely rubbish food, no taste at all. service was awful.waitess were always stand behind bar, totally waste of time and money.

Having seen these negative reviews, I have to say that what they wrote is totally true. I agree with them.I went there last week and had meal, the food was ok, but the waitress there was so unhelpful and rude. I spoke to manager to complain about the service but she said this is how we serve. if you are not happy you dont have to come back again. I cant believe anybody will give them 4 star rating, I bet its one of them friends who wrote this.if there is a minus star, I would give them minus 10. Just dont go there! Its shit service restaurant.

I was there with a group of friends from the office, not only did we have a great variety of dishes all of which were delicious but we ended up paying a very small amount for the large quantity served. It was a very nice evening!

I wish I had read the reviews before going to this restaurant! The food was pretty good, but the service ruined our evening. The waitress was incredibly rude. We spent nearly an hour trying to get our bill correct, as they had added heaps of things on to it that we hadn't ordered. We were very polite about it, but they kept getting it wrong over and over again and when we sent it back the waitress stomped around like a teenager and at one point hit the wall with her hand. We had to ask repeatedly for tap water, they never brought our desserts out and seemed in a huge hurry to get us out of the restaurant. I won't be going back.

Very disappointed. It's hard to understand the 4 stars given to this restaurant. The service was very unfriendly. We asked to change to another table far from the freezing cold air-conditioning and were told that changing table will confuse the "kitchen" !
Then the starter and the main course arrived at the same time. We said that we wanted the main course AFTER the starter and were told that there is no starter or main course, there is only one course and that we should have said that we wanted the "starters" before !
The cold aubergine starter was not edible. The main course was so so.

Food quality:
Grilled pork dumplings: the WORST dumplings I have ever had! The first page of their menu introduced that they hire their chef from Norther China? How could possible a chef from northern China ever make such disgusting dumplings! and those dumplings are defiantly from some JP or KR market!

Pan-fried pig's intestines with hot chilli and pepper MEAL:
Okay the soup comes with the meal is fine and I quite like it, but the taste really like from some ready-to-cook sauce. but I cannot confirm if this true.
But the pan-friend pig's intestines with hot chilli and pepper dish..., they taste like nothing..., no spicy, no salt, no pepper..., I feel I'm tasting plastic!!

But next time I'll be there again to give a try with awarding food.

yet another review in which time out exaggerates the quality of the food. after reading Guy Diamond's opinion I expected to be transported on a wild and exotic journey... the reality was quite disappointing and a far cry from the vibrant flavours and textures described above.

I use timeout religiously for restaurant recommendations so snapped this one up. For the first time i was sorely disappointed. We were told to go upstairs for our booked table for 2. We were left for 20 mins standing around. No one even blinked when we walked out. Although I didn't get to try the food I would never go back, as I have never experienced such bad service at a timeout 4 star restaurant.

my friend and i had an amazing meal there - food took slightly long to arrive, but even though we did not complain we received 2 free dishes and 25% off the bill....
the pork belly was rich, sweet and tender, and it was refreshing to taste spices like cumin on the skewered lamb at a chinese restaurant, there were also fresh moments with the wide flat noodles salad with cucumber etc.

i can't stop thinking about my next visit..

Although this is not a forum, I felt compelled to respond to Hanson's ridiculous diatribe. Hanson, were you reading the same review as the rest of us - at which point was the reviewer "bragging like an idiot?" The only idiot on this page is you my friend. Discovering different regional cuisines is a treat for us all, not a rite of passage, so I fail to see what your problem is with Mr Diamond encouraging readers to wander from familiar paths when ordering. You berate the reviewer for not knowing the difference between Suan Cai and Kimchi but do it in such a way that only you come across as the ignorant one.

Average - I agree with Jamie Lyons review below.

If you've never ventured further than your local Cantonese then this will be amazing.

If, however, you've been to really good regional Hunan (Local Friends in Golders Green) or Sichuan (Angeles or Chilli Cool, say 3 or 4 years ago) or Geoffrey Leong's own excellent Taiwanese Leong's Legend, and you're expecting the same level of excitment and interesting new flavours and textures, you're gonna be disappointed.

We pretty much tried only the Manchurian things, but there was just no wow.

The food is ok, but someone has got the salt nazi's in, as everything was lacking in depth.

I'm not one for taking a restaurants decor into account, but his other places are well finished. It's hard not to think they've stretched themselves a bit thin with this one, as it looks cheap - just check out the men's toilets.

The bubble tea was good though, and 10p cheaper than the bubble tea shop round the corner. So not all bad!

It's worth trying, if only because before 31st August you can get 25% off by quoting "Restaurant Priviledge" when booking.

Thanks Hanson for your clarifications. It's true that I'm not Manchurian, and not an expert on this particular regional Chinese cuisine. But I have eaten Dongbei food in Dongbei restaurants in China, and have an interest in it. That's why I took a Dongbei friend with me to this restaurant - a former food and drink editor in China - to help guide me through the menu. I think you'll agree she did a good job at directing me to the signature dishes of the region - and I hope this helped guide readers who are less familiar with China as to what makes Dongbei food so different and distinctive.

You can't be serious. Rice is such a rarity there? Because of the rich black soil from the region, rice from there is famous in the nation.

I'm from north-east China (Dong Bei). Suan Cai, is not Chinese Kim Chi. It is sauerkraut (if you ever heard of it, Guy?) . Kim Chi is as popular as Suan Cai in my region. Suan Cai is Suan Cai/ Sauerkraut, Kim Chi is Kim Chi. Not a version of a sort.

Also, Lamb bbq is from west China, Uygur Muslim people spread it all over the nation. It is popular in Dong Bei. But not a speciality.

Guy obviously didn't do any homework but still went on bragging like an idiot.

Me and My Brother had the following;

Lamb Kebab Skewers - These were bursting with fresh flavours and tasted excellent.
Mandarin Style Ribs - When we first saw this, it looked huge for a starter. But it has allot of bone. Nothing special, but nice and meaty.
Fragrant Chicken - Quite spicy, good fresh flavours, but a little fiddly because nearly every chicken piece had bones in it. (I would have preferred to wolf it down)
Pork belly with glass noodles - This dish was quite good, but seemed to have the same flavour as the ribs.
Ducks tongues - I'll be honest, if I tell you it wasn't all that, no one will be surprised. Once again, it tasted like the ribs.
Chinese Pancake - Quite nice, but there's only so far I can get excited over a Chinese pancake.
Mixed Vegetables - This was a main meal of Potatoes, red and green peppers and Ginger soaked it as much oil as humanly possible. It was like a soggy version of what it should of been.
Steamed rice - What more can I say.

The waitresses were really friendly, They told us we ordered too much and said what meals they thought we wouldn't like. Good touch of honesty. The smaller of the waitresses was adorable.

3 Stars because although the menu was not your average, the quality certainly was.