Red Chilli Restaurant

Always one of my favourites Red Chilli felt it had lost a little of it lustre on this visit — in attention to detail though rather than quality of food. Arriving at 8 for dinner for two we were not treated (nor was anyone else) to the usual complimentary appetisers of roasted nuts and pickled vegetables. Service was as friendly as always and the food was great. Prawn and pork dumplings, seafood and beef birds nest and braised pork with pak choi rich in aromas and flavour. We were however surround by stacked chairs and a stored table which felt lazy and undermined the ambience and sense of occasion. After so many fine meals here though, I’ll forgive them this once.

I visit Red Chilli fairly often, since in my opinion it is the best Chinese restaurant on Oxford Road. The menu is infinite, so that every time it takes me a while to decide what to have; alongside vegetarian dishes, they offer many different types of meat (beef, chicken, duck, mutton, pork,…) and fish. I’ve never been deceived so far: meat is good quality and always well-​cooked, and also the sauces they prepare are extremely tasty and some of them have a delightful sticky consistence. Mind that dishes on the menu that are marked with more than one chilli can be very spicy! :)
Prices are definitely affordable, for a main dish they range between 7 – 10 ponds, that is coherent with most of the other Chinese restaurants in the city. My unique remark is about the staff, that gets kind of nagging when the kitchen or the restaurant is going to close. Once I’ve been forced to order so quickly that I almost chose a random dish (which luckily turned out to be delicious). Therefore, I would recommend not to go too late. Toilets appear to be pretentious, with a huge sofa just in the middle.

My parents are from Hong Kong so I’ve not been brought up eating chillies or very spicy dishes but I am a big fan of this Chinese restaurant which specialises in Szechuan and Beijing cuisine! Unlike most of the tired looking restaurants in China Town, Red Chilli is boldly decorated — a bit blingy for some! It’s a large restaurant with wall dividers creating intimate spaces as well as large round tables for parties of 8+.
I’ve been here for their lunch specials — service can be quite slow during busy lunch times but the food comes out piping hot and generously portioned. The lunch affair is a little bit more than your average British Chinese favourites but not much. The real gems come out of the pictured main a la carte menu. This is amazing because having pictures make people unfamiliar with Chinese food more adventurous! The dishes are authentic and this is evident from the large Chinese patronage.
On our latest visit, we ordered a selection of starters — Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings, Salt and Pepper Soft Shell Crab (came out in a heavy batter rather than a light cornflour dusting), Spare Ribs in OK Sauce (the ribs came chopped up in bite-​size pieces), Filet Steak Rolls in Cantonese Sauce (the beef was a bit dry) and Pan Fried Shredded Courgette Pancakes — all were generously portioned. For our mains, we had Shredded Pork, Tea Tree Mushroom, Sliced Bamboo Shoots and Pepper Stew (not spicy, very light and good textures) and Frog’s Legs in Big Grandma’s Chilli Sauce Stew (very tasty and not too spicy) both of which were served on a mini cauldron and bubbled away at out table. We also had Stir Fried King Prawns, Chicken and Fried Beancurd Balls (a nice light dish usually but wasn’t too great here), Spicy Hot Poached Mutton in Chilli Oil (very hot and only for the adventurous — looks slightly overwhelming but the soft tendon mutton is so worth it!), Geleshan Dry Fried Diced Chicken with Pepper Corn & Dried Chilli (this was not so great — the chicken was a bit on the chewy side and did not taste of much unless you got one of the dried chillies but then it was only heat and not actually tasty).
Come here if you love your traditional Chinese food! Especially if you like it spicy!

The lunch special is not good at all, £6.50 for I course. I did try twice, both of them are bad. Doesn’t rly taste like Chinese food. The servers there are not nice as well. I don’t think I will go there again.

We ordered wrong and didn’t manage to get a good enough range of dishes (a few of them tasted too similar) but it was still good.
We had a dish of deep fried beef strips coated in a sweet Cantonese sauce, some chicken dish with dried chillies and peanuts and an aubergine dish with salted fish (not enough salted fish and too much bamboo shoots). Each dish wasn’t bad but all three together in the same order wasn’t a good idea. Too many similar flavours and colours!
We also had pork belly with preserved veg and greens. I liked this although it needed slightly more seasoning.
I enjoyed the meal but would have liked to have had more adventurous choices. Next time!

OMG what can I say, I am so glad i walked that extra mile to come here rather than Portland Street.
On arrival from the bitter wind, this place was huge, with imaginative decorations such a little birds cages for lamp shades, embossed wooden paneling and stone like columns.
We were soon spotted by the point of house, and guided into a naughty corner. To be honest from this point my hopes were dampened, because we were cornered in by other people and there was a unattractive plastic fan near my head. I thought we would be forgotten about, I was wrong. The waitresses were lovely, especially in their black and red garb ;p and were most helpful.
Here the menu offers a selection of lots of Chinese dishes but with extra fiery chili, I do not normally like photos of the food within a menu but these were helpful/​A good thing to note, is that they do not offer everything on the menu in the Portland Street Red Chili so come here to avoid disappointment!
For starters we chose prawn and pork dumplings and quarter of a shredded duck. When the duck came it was really tasty (yes I am a bad pescetarian). but the buns… wow they were huge! I had to actually share these and leave one behind.
From the chef special menu I decided on the spicy seafood in a clay pot. costing £16. My companion went for the chili beef noodles. After barely five minutes later they arrived, and I almost died. a word of caution. when you order something make sure you are sharing with at least another person! PORTIONS ARE HUGE! Mine was of full of juicy big scallops, which are not cheap. At this point the waiter laughed at our bewilderment. .
I honestly felt so guilty that we had hardly made a dent in our food stack, again you really need to come here with a group of people and sit at the round tables bearing a rotated service. A lot of large working groups were sat at these to discuss things over dinner.
After prodding our food for awhile we admitted defeat. The waiter who had kindly laughed at us in jest offered to put everything in a doggy bag.
I usually decline to do so, but there was so much left over that I didn’t want the chef to be insulted. Plus it made a good meal the next day! My only regret after such a good meal was not having a lot of change to tip appropriately. I will come back here again with a group. I think I will enjoy the atmosphere better, and try lot of other tasties.

I love Sichuan food and I’m crazy, so on the way home from a recent road trip up north, I thought it would be a good idea to spend an hour and detour to Manchester to have dinner at Red Chili (beats whatever one could have at a motorway rest stop). So we parked the car on some sketchy Manchester side street and found our way in. The modest entrance belies a vast subterranean dining room packed with happy-​looking diners.
A look at the menu (one menu — in both English and Chinese, which is a good sign — non-​Chinese speakers aren’t automatically barred from getting the good stuff) revealed that a meal here could go a number of different ways. They have a mix of legit Sichuan dishes and Westernized «Chinese» dishes.
My husband and I had a delicious meal. This may be partially due to the fact that I know Sichuan cuisine (I’ve spent a lot of time in China, including extensive travel in Sichuan Province, used to speak Chinese «proficiently» but now can at least sort of order food) and we ordered a few «adventurous» (but not actually that adventurous) dishes out of the gate. To start, we ordered the jellyfish and cloud ear fungus dishes, under «Cold Starters.» (Hint: all the stuff under «Hot Starters» is Westernized). Both were delicious. We then had water boiled beef and dry wok beef — both classic Sichuan dishes, and dan dan noodles. All had great flavors — textbook in a good way.
Clientele was a mix of Asian-​looking tables and non-​Asian tables. One thing that bothered me was that the table set up was different depending on the perceived race of the customers. Those who look European or white (including us — even after I ordered in Chinese — broken Chinese, but I think I still demonstrated at least minimal knowledge of the language and cuisine) were given forks and Western sppons, while Asian-​looking people were given chopsticks, proper Chinese soup spoons and tea cups. To be fair, I saw many tables of white people eating what appeared to be Westernized dishes (fried stuff, gloopy sauce with mystery meat dishes) with forks. Still, that leads me to believe that a person who maybe is a novice to Sichuan cuisine but still wants to learn and experience the real thing may have trouble here. It seems management have non-​Chinese people pegged as wanting a certain experience — for instance, our beef could have been spicer and did not have many chilies in it, while a glance at the table next to us — who were speaking Chinese with a Southwestern accent — had the same dish with a beautiful amount of chilies. And this was after I had specifically asked for an actual Sichuan level of spice.
Definitely a great place to go if you find yourself in Manchester, but if you don’t speak Chinese, bring someone who does or who at least understands Sichuan food, or do some research ahead of time. Also, it would be a great place to go with a large group in order to sample more of their dishes — they have plenty of big round tables.

Four stars! I came here for the Unilocal world food night, and was advised by my new friend Max that Sechuan was the specialty. He wasn’t wrong. The food here was outstanding, authentic and full of flavour. There were seven of us and no one was shy with the experimental stuff so I got to try some incredible dishes. High points for me were the eel, the pork belly stew and the spicy Sechuan pork and noodle soup. I’d recommend this place to anyone who wants to try some new dishes that go beyond takeaway standards. The tofu was the best I’ve had, having tried it a couple of times before with less than joyous results. Here, it made sense and I truly did enjoy it.

Let me start off by saying that the crispy aromatic duck here is absolutely scrumptious. It is incredibly delicious and we were very happy with it, minus the first batch of cold pancakes. I’d recommend this dish to everyone, it’s just that good.
That being said, the service was awful. Once you’ve been seated and your order has initially been taken, don’t expect to see you server (s) again until they fly by your table to drop off your food, acting as if the mere serving of your food has caused their day to go awry. You’re a hindrance, an annoyance, and god forbid you’d want a refill or some more pancakes for your crispy duck, which were £2 by the way and took ages to be brought out to us. No one came by our table to check on us, see if maybe we wanted for anything, though the table next to us seemed to get remarkably better service constantly being checked on, refills, etc. We’d like that sort of service! Why didn’t we get that sort of service? Did we do something wrong? Were we forgotten? We smell good! We’re friendly too! Why were we blacklisted?! We might not speak Chinese but we are really great tippers. Try us!
Once we’d finished our dinner, no one came by though the plates and glasses were long empty and our napkins no longer in our laps. We sat there, shunned in our corner, trying to make eye contact, half raising our hands in a pleading attempt to summon someone, anyone at all to get the bill for us.
I think we’ll try the Red Chili in Chinatown from now on as the reviews are much better.

I am trying the best as I can not to be biased as I am writing this review. And coming from California, it is a bit difficult, but I really have to give Red Chili a break.
For it’s location, the food isn’t too bad at all, especially when they have the lunch time deal, which I so dearly appreciate as an international student! Whenever I come for the lunch special, I usually go for the choice of meat & sauce — wherein I go for the beef & black pepper sauce (YUM!), and a side of boiled rice (egg fried rice just seems going too far on the savoury side). And I think they do that quite well. I have also came here during their non-​lunch-​special times, and had the sichuan noodle soup, of which I expected to be quite spicy, seeing that it was supposed to be Sichuan cuisine. Sadly, it was not. But then again, with my experiences, not much in the UK really is, so it was good effort. But I was really expecting a kick!
The interior is very nice. Definitely a nice place to take the parentals to.
For the value, I think it is quite fair, although I personally wouldn’t really come unless they had their lunch special! Which I have heard they no longer have =[. Please bring it back!

Whatever can be said about the ambitious menu here, I’m sure the biggest profit maker for the establishment is the «boiled rice» at £1.70, they expect everyone to get an order or three since the portion of the non-​fluffy dried out clumps is rather measly. Same thing for the soup, it doesn’t come in a large bowl with a ladle. If you ask for two bowls — for the soup — they bring two bowls, that’s it. You have to make them come back and ask for a second soup spoon…
We just wanted a late night snack, not a dinner, before heading to our hotel up the street. The folks at Red Chili make it plain, they’re here for you if you want to drop some cash, otherwise they look to it as an obligation to discourage you otherwise. It’s as if they were auditioning for Edsel Ford Fongs place at Sam Wo’s. Except they just don’t have his style.
The «Hot Sour» soup looked, and tasted, like they reduced a two liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch, splashed some vinegar and chili oil on it and shoved it onto the table.
The Stir-​Fried Roast Lamb had a pile of old coriander-​cumin powder tossed all over it. Which might have been tasty. At least the lamb part. The other half of the dish was composed of mostly raw white onion (which might work for a Balti pickle) but was too overpowering on the spicy lamb. I could of used some more rice to cut it, but I didn’t wan’t to part with another fiver.
We got out of there…

This is totally my favorite Chinese restaurant in Manchester! I have friends from China who think this is the closest to authentic Chinese you can get in UK!
My recommendation: Spicy Hot Poached Mutton with Boiled Rice (I genuinely crave this dish ever so often)
P.S The portions are very very generous and the price is very friendly to your pocket!
My verdict: If you like Chinese and you like your wallet this will be your next favorite place! :)

The décor is great but the food needs some more effort, not very authentic Chinese foodtasted much better for a lower price in Manchester, they also added a 10% surcharge for December which makes it not worth while going.
If you are in the area and desperate for Chinese food there is a better option a few streets north east of here

A somewhat austere interior greets you as you enter the restaurant but don’t be put off. The attentive staff gave excellent service and the food was delicious. As a bonus the restaurant owner is chasmatic and provided some highly amusing entertainment which went down well with the kids. My family thoroughly enjoyed the meal and asked if we could come again next time we are in Manchester.

Cosy, comfortable Chinese restaurant with an extensive Chinese menu at good reasonable prices with large portions given. They also allow you take away the remnants of whatever you couldn’t finish, good rprices drinks too, good and polite service. Even though it is right on Oxford Road, inside the venue, it is really quiet inside with a quirky interior. Definitely a place to visit for those passionate about Chinese cuisine.

Previously Moso Moso, Red Chili has recently had a little make over and come out to be a much better restaurant on the other side. Serving really great Thai and Chinese food, Red Chili is a lovely place to have an Asian meal in style.
The service is friendly and efficient and the food is good, but like a lot of Chinese restaurants, the menu is vast and quite overwhelming to look at. I tend to stick to what I know I like, which isn’t really that interesting but otherwise I get lost in the menu.
With a function room upstairs for karaōke and open to hire, Red Chilli ticks all the boxes for an East Asian evening out.

For most people, this is a very good, but fairly pricey Chinese restaurant. Expect to spend about £20 per head, but get much much better food and more variety than at most similar places. The food is really good stuff. The meat tastes like what it should and the sauces are rich but well balanced, everything doesn’t taste the same. This restaurant tastes like it cooks to order, unlike almost every chinese I have ever visited.
For students, this place is heaven. At lunchtimes from 12 – 2 you can get a large portion of rice and a large portion of a main for £5 (you heard me). Or for £8 you can get one of two good soups, one of 4 great starters and the rice and main! You can also select a noodle main if you wish, an all in one dish. Basically you select a meat (or vegetarian alternative, there are multiple choices of each), a sauce (there are ten to choose from) and they make it for you.
I have literally eaten here well over a dozen times (maybe two dozen) in my first year at university. The food isn’t just cheap. It’s great. For under £10 I can have a very very large and very very good meal. So I do.
Update: Red Chilli has now had a bit of a makeover in it’s Oxford Road branch, and looks much more authentic now. Food still as good as ever and cheap.

This restaurant deserves more credit than its current worth. Sadly this won’t happen though because it’s built into a car park and is next door to McDonalds and Subway, and with reviews such as this places first one. It’s a shame because red chilli is simply awesome. With their extensive menu they can convert anyone who says there not into Chinese. The place is a big venue and can hold a lot of hungry people, the tables and seating is simple and you’re surrounded by a leg’s height view of oxford road through the windows. The furnishing is cool with an old tuk tuk in the entrance and those giant stone dogs which guard the home or something. Customers can collect takeaways and lunch time sees students flock to this hotspot for a £5 lunch. Recommendation would be try the dumplings which must of fell from heaven.

I’m honestly shocked by the 1 star review that a previous reviewer gave Red Chilli. I absolutely love this place!
For those in the know about Chinese food, Red Chilli serves authentic Beijing and Sichuan cuisine. For those who (like me) don’t know what that means, expect strong chilli and soy flavours and rich, sticky sauces. The food here is great quality, and delicious too.
Though the a la carte menu is sizeable and exciting, the absolute stand-​out thing about Red Chilli is the £5 lunchtime special menu. This absolute gem of a menu is available Mon-​Fri 12 – 2, and costs £5 for a main, or £8 for an astounding three courses. And there’s no cop-​out, either; the three course meal consists of soup (hot and sour or chicken and sweetcorn), dim sum (spring rolls or salt and pepper ribs… go for the ribs!) and a substantial main. The main choice is wide, with six meat or veg options that you can team with one of ten sauces, and a further eleven complete dishes including beef fried rice and Singapore vermicelli. I can’t even do the maths, so let’s say there are approximately four million combinations, that should cover most bases. My favourite is the beef in gongbao sauce. I had never even heard of gongbao sauce before coming here, and man I’m glad I did. It’s a thick, sticky, fragrant chilli sauce full of whole peanuts and sliced garlic and chillis, and a lot of beef. Also highly recommended is Curly Friend’s favourite, Singapore vermicelli and Vege Friend’s mixed vegetables in satay sauce.
The a la carte is not as bargainous as the lunch menu, but they do offer set banquets (for those who find the colossal menu too hard to handle) for between £22 and £26 per person. But where’s the fun in that, when you can explore the menu! Starters and dim sum will set you back between £3-£7, mains £7.50-£16. It’s not the cheapest place to eat if you’re going on an evening, but the food is well cooked, the service is excellent and the atmosphere is great.
The general idea I have of Red Chilli is that it is great for lunch, truly marvellous, and though I wouldn’t pop in for a casual dinner, it’s nice for a special occasion. Hmmm, that reminds me, it’s my birthday soon…