Nine places to eat 'Asian' food in Manchester that aren’t Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat
Gordon Ramsay’s Lucky Cat has arrived in Manchester to much fawning and fanfare but I have been rolling my eyes at anyone who mentions it.
Disclaimer: These are my personal views and do not necessarily reflect those of anybody else who employs me as a writer.
The press release for Manchester’s newest restaurant, Lucky Cat, heralded owner Gordon Ramsay’s “genius” saying: “This grand opening cements Manchester’s position as a frontrunner on the global food and drink stage”.
Its menu is described as “elevated Asian food”. Are we talking about the price, here? Or does Ramsay purport to have somehow elevated “Asian” food by whitewashing an entire continent’s worth of culture, history, wisdom and skill into a neatly packaged pill for the Ivy demographic to swallow?
As posts about the restaurant opening in the long-vacated Jamie’s Italian space in Manchester inevitably rolled out on social media this week, many people also commented on the price of a side dish of egg fried rice that costs £9.50.
I’m not against expensive food per se. Pricing is not as simple as a side-by-side comparison of L’Enclume vs Go Falafel. The price of a dish will also consider the restaurant setting (though LK does look like one of the fancier Pizza Expresses with a few red neon cat signs and waving cats for “Asian” factor), service, and Ramsay’s celebrity status. But £9.50 for a side dish of “egg fried rice” is very expensive and for the same price, you can get a main course in many of Manchester’s existing, wonderful independent restaurants that really need your business.
It’s not just the price that’s offputting about Lucky Cat. This guy has made a lot of money out of humiliating hard-working people on TV and perpetuating a culture of aggression in kitchens. His repackaging of other cultures’ food heritage, cobbling together a mish-mash of “Asian food” (and selling it at high prices) is pretty insensitive.
The continent of Asia is massive and the food you can find from Mongolia to Sri Lanka to South Korea is not one homogeneous Asian other. Asia also includes countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Iran, Kuwait, and Armenia but there doesn’t appear to be any of these influences on this “Asian” menu.
Lucky Cat seems to take most of its inspo from China and Japan with a smattering of other ESEA influences thrown in. For example, egg-fried rice is a simple dish believed to have originated in Yangzhou, China. Looking at this social media post, Lucky Cat’s version appears to include Japanese ingredients like bonito flakes and is served not too dissimilarly to Korean Bibimbap with a raw or lightly cooked egg stirred into hot rice. Hmm.
Ramsay and his ilk have been criticised for this kind of behaviour before. Food writer Angela Hui was subjected to the chef’s famous temper when she wrote about her experience of the press launch for the Mayfair Lucky Cat for Eater magazine back in 2019.
My friend Anja Madhvani wrote a wonderful article criticising The Ivy that in part has bolstered me to write this. It’s well worth a read for a take on the subject from the perspective of a British Asian (Anja’s heritage is Gujarati) and includes some great tips on eating out in Leeds.
I’ve kept my criticism brief so I can spend the rest of this piece championing others.
Here are nine ESEA places to get main course rice dishes in Manchester for roughly the same price as Lucky Cat’s side dish of egg fried rice.
Kambuja (Cambodian)
12 Stockport Rd, Marple, Stockport SK6 6BJ
The original Cambodian restaurant in Manchester, and the only one in the North til it opened a sister restaurant Mekong Cat in Stockport which is also well worth a visit. Kambuja (formerly Angkor Soul) has been a must-visit in Marple since it opened in 2015. It now also has a stall in Stockport Market. Chef-proprietor Y Sok is a Cambodian-American chef whose family emigrated to the USA after the Khmer Rouge massacre. Y Sok learned to cook traditional Khmer cuisine from her family and poured her passion for this cuisine into her menus here in Manchester when she opened her first restaurant with her husband Jonathan. Decorated with vintage vinyl (Jonathan’s passion), this small cafe serves dishes like the Cambodian national dish Fish Amok, a coconut curry with lime leaf, lemongrass and spinach.
Chai Bai (Cambodian fried rice) with beef or chicken is £15.95
See also: Mekong Cat
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Nilas Burmese (Burmese)
386 Third Ave, Trafford Park, Stretford, Manchester M17 1JE
As far as I know, this is the only Burmese restaurant in Manchester. Owner Nila is a font of knowledge on the food of her heritage and beyond. She’s a massive foodie who loves to travel and eat everything - my favourite type of person. You can visit her cafe during the day by hopping on a tram to “Village” on the Trafford line. She also does the loveliest supper clubs where she brings out big sharing platters of special dishes as well as individual bits and bobs. These are BYOB and a great way to meet new friends while enjoying dishes like the Burmese national dish Mohinga, a rice noodle and coconut soup. Nila has just announced she will also be opening an outpost at Kargo, the new food hall that is set to open at MediaCity.
Pork with basmati rice and salad is £6.50 / Daily specials are £7/£7.50
One Plus (Chinese)
42 Charles St, Manchester M1 7DB
Slap bang in the middle of studentsville on Charles Street next door to hip venue and club Yes is the three-floored palace of food fomo that is One Plus. First, you have to choose which of the floors to dine on. It might be their ground floor conveyor belt hot pot with colour-coded plastic plates - a must-do experience in itself, or their superb seafood and BBQ restaurant (props to my old pal the whole seabass in chilli) on the top floor, or the faster and cheaper but equally good noodle and rice focused basement canteen. We’re in camp rice this time, of course. Actually, I am always in camp rice. The rice and noodle menu changes weekly.
Young Chow Fried Rice (or any other dish on that week’s menu) is £10.50
See also: Peace Garden, Happy Seasons, Chef Diao, Mei Dim, No.8 Hot Pot, Mr Hong, Jade City and many more.
Pho Cue (Vietnamese)
52a Faulkner St, Manchester M1 4FH
Cue’s mum escaped the Sino-Vietnamese war and was pregnant with him when she came to the UK with her family. She worked in takeaways and restaurants for years and when Cue was old enough and tired of watching her stand up eating a snack in a kitchen corridor in lieu of a proper lunch break, he decided to open his own restaurant. He employed his mum and uncle so he could treat them respectfully and share their incredible Vietnamese recipes with Manchester. His 48-hour pho broth has since acquired cult status, and you have to try the lobster version he cooks at weekends. But you can get great rice dishes here too. I interviewed Cue back in 2020 just as the restaurant opened and since then, it has been given props by many a food critic including Jay Rayner.
Vietnamese fried rice with chicken or beef is £9.30
See also: Viet Shack, Mi and Pho, Vnam, I am Pho
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Sakura (Hong Kong)
8 Salisbury House, St Stephen Street, Salford M3 6AX
Many people have left Hong Kong for political reasons recently and this has seen Manchester dining spots catering more and more to its new ex-HK population. One of these, Sakura, sits on a scruffy parade of shops in Salford, its windows steamed up from the heat from bowls of food and the people enjoying them inside. You can pull up a stool and savour dishes like steaming bowls of noodles and broth with brisket, tendon and honeycomb trip, HK French toast, and ma po tofu. I’m still learning about Hong Kong food but with more and more of it to enjoy in Manchester, it’s a great time to do so. On a visit just after Sakura opened, I enjoyed a hearty dish of fried pork chop with scrambled egg and rice. My ex-colleague Davey Brett went back and chatted with the team there for the website we wrote for at the time. Six months or so later, Jay Rayner praised it in a review.
Pork and egg rice £9.50
See also: Hong Kong Choi, Harcourt, Dragon Oriental, PopChop
Seoul Kimchi (Korean)
275 Upper Brook St, Manchester M13 0HR
Manchester loves Korean food, sort of. You will find kimchi toasties being munched in cafes all over the region, and almost every mediocre small plates gaff has a sticky gochujang-doused ‘Korean chicken’ dish on its menu. But Manchester also has tons of restaurants dedicated to the whole gamut of Korean food, some of which have been going for decades. Byunghee Kwon’s Seoul Kimchi is one of my personal favourites. A petite corner restaurant near the Manchester Royal Infirmary. It was here that I first got a taste of its namesake fermented cabbage and was immediately hooked. Seoul Kimchi also does a fantastic bibimbap, a must-try dish if you are new to Korean food in which rice, meat, and veggies are served in a very hot stone bowl with a raw egg cracked on top. Your job is to stir it all up at the table, cooking the egg in the process. Do not sleep on the incred spicy kanpungi chicken either.
Spicy fried rice with chicken, pork, squid or prawns is £8.90
See also: Thirsty Korean, Koreana, Bandibul, Azuma, Chimaek
Thai Kitchen No 6 (Thai)
Chapel Walks, Manchester M2 1HN
My current favourite Thai restaurant in Manchester is this one in a basement on a back street off Cross Street. It’s just down the road from Sam’s Chop House. Here, you will find a menu full of dishes you might find all over actual Thailand and a few from neighbouring cuisines (like Hainanese poached chicken). They’re not neutered for English tastes nor made particularly “Instagrammable”, thank god. The salads here are incredible, from salmon larb to classic, crunchy and searingly spicy papaya, it always impresses me just how much flavour can be packed into one plate. But of course, there is plenty of fun with rice to be had too.
Kao pad sapparot (pineapple fried rice with prawns) is £12.95
See also: Siam Smiles, Try Thai, Phetphailin, Hong Thai, That's Thai
Yes Lah (Malaysian and Filippino)
102 Barlow Moor Rd, Manchester M20 2PN
Yes Lah is a gem of a neighbourhood cafe in Didsbury created by owners Yen Tham who is Malaysian and Zosima Fullwell who is Filippino. There is a lot of them in the walls here, they even did much of the interior work themselves and the result is a place that feels homely and full of love. The two met when both were doing the circuits as street food pop-ups Wok’s Cluckin and Mama Z respectively. Here, you’ll find the Malaysian national dish Nasi Lemak with coconut milk cooked rice flavoured with pandan and served with sambal, kari, peanuts and a sunny side up fried egg. Or how about a Tocilog bowl with tocino (a sweetened pork belly from the Philippines), chicken and fried egg on steamed coconut rice? Hell yes, lah.
A Yes Lah rice bowl with garlicky tofu or chicken is £11.50
See also: Restaurant Nur, Sambal, Tarp's Filipino Fusion Street Food
Yuzu (Japanese)
39 Faulkner St, Manchester M1 4EE
If you prefer your rice steamed, sushi seasoned and topped with fresh sashimi and glistening dark green shreds of seaweed, go to Yuzu. This is where I go when I want to feel cleansed and restored. I pretty much always get a salmon don with miso soup and a side of agedashi tofu in a light gingery broth, like the most delicate panna cotta ever wearing a crisp lacey blouse. Yuzu has remained steadfast in its comforting simplicity for years in the face of many mayonnaise-squiggled, crispy onion-coated modern sushi slingers popping up since.
Salmon don with miso soup is £12
See also: Samsi, AKA Sushi, Sushi Marvel, Ikkan
If you are interested in supporting ESEA restaurants and people, a demographic that has experienced increased racism and hate crimes since the pandemic, check out the #ESEAEATS hashtag on Instagram, and follow people like @theannachan and @elsaeats.food
Join me in the comments. What’s your favourite rice dish in Manchester?
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I've only been to Yes Lah out of those listed, I actually stumbled upon it via Google Maps whilst searching in that Disbury/Withington area. I've been to Seoul Kimchi but will give it a try as it's right near my work, I also want to try that new Korean place that MCRFinest featured, but the best (and probably one of the only) Korean places I've been to in Manchester is Ann Yeong, closeby to that Thai No. 6 place https://www.annyeong.co.uk/