We’ve been here before, although not for some years. In the intervening period, we’ve usually got our Cantonese fix at Glamorous on Oldham Road. But we fancied a change and thought of Wings. We weren’t put off by its “Real Housewives of Cheshire” image ( I remember it even getting a celeb plug on Match of the Day from the then manager of United). We weren’t put off by its high prices, seemingly at least a couple of quid dearer on each dish than other city centre Chinese gaff. We weren’t put off by the meaningless puffery of its website which claims that it is “one of very few 5 star restaurants in Manchester”. Eh? 5 star? Wot that? Nor were we put off by the website review page of which the latest review was back in 2005. Nor were we put off by the fib that it “has been recommended by the Michelin Guide for the past 8 years”. It hasn’t – although I’m sure back in the days of pre-history it got a mention somewhere. Right, now I’ve got that off my chest, we’ll get on to dinner.
I might have ordinarily said it’s in a nice area of the city centre. However, there’s demolition work going on and there’s a sense that it’s in the middle of a building site. Once inside, it’s a nice room (albeit one with the walls decorated with plates signed by celeb diners which may be to some folk’s taste – but I wouldn’t be amongst them). And there’s generally attentive staff who actually smile (definitely not a given in the city’s Chinese restaurants). And a thankfully relatively short menu (by comparison with the offerings down the road in Chinatown) .
To start, there’s freebie prawn crackers which come with three dips – sweet chilli sauce (?), another just generic sweet and a belter of thick chilli paste. We then ordered a couple of items from the dim sum list. Char sui bao was everything you’d expect – soft, light steamed dough, encasing the pork filling. First you got anise, then the pork and, finally, the sweetness of a little clingy sauce (maybe a bit too sweet). The second item – lo han vegetables – proved to be something of a mistake. It appears twice on the menu – once as a pan fried bun (which is what we ordered in the expectation of it being a bit crispy) and, second, as steamed dumpling (which is what came). Not knowing the dish, we hadn’t appreciated that this was also quite sweet, so we ended up with two very similar items.
Main courses were both from the beef section. One advertised shreds of fillet steak in a crispy chilli coating. Now this tasted good – a little crunch to the strips, not shreds, of meat in the same way that you get a crisp coating on a toffee apple. And a nice hit from chilli. But you’d have to doubt whether this slightly chewy meat was actually fillet. I have only myself to blame for another bit of not very clever ordering. Beef in Cantonese sauce seemed like a good bet in a Cantonese restaurant but I hadn’t realised that it would be quite sweet. In itself, it was fine (and none of it was left) but this was now sweetish beef, after sweetish pork and vegetables. Rice, as you’d expect was fine.
As I mentioned upthread, the staff are generally on the ball but it’s one of those places where they keep the rice (and your water) on a separate table. Now, I don’t have much of a problem with this but its success is entirely dependent on the staff being sufficiently on the ball to do top-ups before you realise you need one. Unfortunately, they weren’t and I felt a bit like Oliver Twist – “Can I have some more rice, please.”
But, in spite of this not being a perfect meal by any stretch of the imagination, it was an enjoyable enough evening. However, I’m not sure it was sufficiently enjoyable to warrant a return visit more often than once every several years.
