Tai Pan Restaurant

Very nice Chinese Cuisine with reasonable affordable price. The MaPoToFu definitely worth trying. They offer the best tasting MaPoToFu in Manchester.

The proximity to Uni has led me to this Chinese restaurant for a dinner with a couple of friends, to chill out after a working day. The venue and the furniture is absolutely impersonal, with few elements that remind of Chinese culture. The staff has been quite impatient because we were a bit undecided about our orders.
Luckily we haven’t had to wait much for food, but it was definitely not the best Chinese cuisine that I’ve ever tried; if anything, the opposite. My dumplings were extremely chewy and not very tasty, therefore not too pleasant to eat, while the honey roast pork was excessively sweet. My friends haven’t been impressed by their dishes either.
However, the place was almost empty, and the staff has been doing some work on the unused tables in the room throughout our dinner; hence it happened frequently that entire tables were dropped on the floor causing crashes, often startling us. Anyway, it must be added that student discounts are provided, and this is a very positive aspect since, in my opinion, the prices are too high if compared to food quality.

Tai Pan is one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in Manchester. I love their Dim Sum, there are over 20 different choices, my favorite is fried fish cake which I order every time I go there. Dim Sum is usually served before 5pm. Their dishes are not bad either.
I go there with my Chinese friends all the time, usually for lunch. Other times when I go with my non-​Chinese friends, they enjoy their food too. Another good thing is that they have free parking downstairs outside the Chinese supermarket. Although the price for goods in the supermarket are quite expensive compared to the ones in China Town.

Great food! Especially the soup of the day. We ordered set menu with a crab. Chose two dishes from the list for set menu for two persons. There are a lot of dishes to choose. Quality and service is good.

Yummy!
My mates and I had a selection of dim sum & a bottle of wine.
My favs were defo the crispy ribs, spring rolls and scallops.
This place is very big inside. I’m not keen on the banquet style seating arrangement but it doesn’t take away from the yummy food & good service.
Very good lunch option that set us up for the rest of the day.

When I don’t have chinese food– I’m ok.
For the first week.
I start to fidget on day 10… And the twitching and Tourette’s start on day 12.
Tai pan has definitely led a colorful life, just google it. Cockroaches and 70,000 quid fines, topping it all off with fires? It’s definitely been hopping.
There’s a happy hour dim sum and they have a solid dinner menu. Dare I say, the dim sum was better than San Gabriel. No joke.
Order:
Hot and sour soup
Black bean ribs
Scallops
King prawn anything
Peking duck
Avoid:
Singapore style vermicelli
Located next to a chinese super market so you can get your pickled mustard stem and tiger cake on.
Manchester. You Rock.

A great venue for a great lunch. I’ll be honest with you that being a country boy from the ol’ Isle of Man, Dim Sum probably wasn’t something I ever thought I’d be eating for brunch. In fact I think brunch is still some way off being introduced back home but that’s beside the point… Dim sum kicks ass as a brunch option!
Arranged by all star Unilocaler Natalie W, 10 of us headed down for a selection of pork, prawn, duck and all sorts of sides. I loved the bean curd rolls and the prawn dumplings — and when the desserts came I could have eaten a million custard buns!
With all of us drinking our own body weight in Jasmine tea and eating to the point of collapse — £10 a head with tip really didn’t seem too bad on the grand scheme of things for what was amazing food and a great lunch with friends.
Special shout out to Andy Y for helping us make some killer choices on the menu — good knowledge dude!
I look forward to more dim sum brunches and going back to Tai pan sometime soon.

Came here in a group of 10 for Sunday brunch thanks to the lovely Natalie organising it. We were glad we’d booked and were in as soon as the place opened at 11.30 as the popularity is unquestionable — by 12 it was packed!
We had a variety of steamed buns, dumplings, ribs and other dim sum between the table and I enjoyed every bite — This was my first dedicated dim sum experience so although I have limited comparatives I can certainly say that it didn’t disappoint. And at less that £4 per dish (about 3 buns or 5 dumplings for instance) it doesn’t break the bank either.
For dim sum aficionados I do have to mention that we chose from a menu not a trolley.
Chinese tea all round for about £1 a person rounded it out and if you leave the lid of the pot open when you are done the staff go and refill with hot water. (By the forth or fifth pot it’s a bit weak though!!)

Disappointed at the lack of trolleys, but not at the quality of dim sum. Siu mai and har gau were very excellent, although I wasn’t so keen on the char siu bun. We tried a scallop cheong fun which was delicious and I think the favourite of the meal. We also tried a pork and oyster fried cake which was a New Year special but weren’t so keen. I forced my friend to try chicken feet which I love; she wasn’t convinced. It probably didn’t help that they were massive and looked like they came from some kind of genetically modified super-​hen. Would definitely go back for dim sum and recommend, the supermarket looks good too.

if you love chinese food… this is the place to go! grt taste, grt service, but sometimes u need to wait till you gt a place… always packed!

For the price it is a good quality restaurant, the décor could do with a little updating but thats not why i came to a restaurant!
Food came quickly and service was friendly.\

Realy enjoyed our meal here tonight, had dim sum starters (beef with Ginger and peanuts plus some spicy meat ones too) both very fresh and tasty. Seabass steamed plus pak choi with garlic for mains and for us this was the best Chinese meal I’d had outside of china. Simply wonderful food and great service. Not cheap but great quality.

It is nice deco but the service was not that good. I went there with half dimsum offer just before 5pm. I could see the staffs eating their foods and the foods looks nicer than what we ordered!
Dim sum is fine but some of them do not look that fresh.
I ordered Chinese menu, I really do not like the restaurants which have different menu for Chinese and English. As I want to eat Chinese meals!
The food is all right and the service is all right, we had quite a lots and the bill was just 10 pounds with a pot of chinese tea thanks to half price offer! It is good to enjoy reasonable dim sum!

Really good Chinese restaurant with very handy car parking. It also has a large chinese supermarket.
At busy times it can be abit crazy and if you go e.g. Sunday lunch you could be waiting awhile for the «dim sum» trolleys going around to get to your table. It could be so busy that its all run out by the time it gets to you!

Admittedly chinese restaurants rarely cater well for vegetarians, but the Tai Pan, I find, is particularly limited. There is a generous lunchtime set menu which my omnivorous friends are big fans of but unfortunately exludes us vegetarians unless you like eating the sickly, sweet and sour offering every time you visit.
At lunchtime, service is slow, staff unfriendly and the food deserves little comment.

I was a regular here for years 2 to 3 times a week for dim sum and 2 to 3 times a evening for a evening mealcant cook me.
Quite often I had complaints about the food.
One thing u need to be careful of are the charges on the bill.
for one u cannot see how many dim sum they have charged u so its up to them really.
Once I ordered in the afternoon a noodle dish off the promotion menu at I think about £5.50 a dish.
Ate it and when I went to pay the bill had on it Noodle dish £7.80ish. so i asked about the price difference.
He asked me if there was any preserved veg in the noodles I had, I said yes and so he said well thats the prices then
but I did point out I had only the promotion menu to look at and didnt even get to see the normal menu.
Anyways just paid and left.
Still carried on going until one occasion the roast duck, pork and BBQ pork rice dish was not nice.
I told the waiter the roast looks like its been deep fried, he answered that it had no way been deep fried but maybe has been microwaved!!!
Even my daughter had to laugh at his answer.
And he did nothing like change it for us or ask us what we want him to do.
So when I paid the bill she asked if I wanted to leave a tip i told her we were not happy ad she said next time to tell the staff… I said no more next time!!!
After being a regular for so many years I abandoned them!!!

Nope, not the most-​inspiring location for a Chinese restaurant — on the constantly-​choked A34 and sat on top of a concrete cube of a cash n’ carry — but don’t let it put you off; you will not be disappointed.
The menu range is astounding and I would seriously recommend the banquets if there’s a team of you going; if you haven’t eaten for a week then the Chicken Chow Mein should be right up your street. Of the two I have had, I have never managed to finish one yet!
Getting in by car isn’t a problem as the parking facilities are excellent, courtesy of a secure area around the back.

It’s located in a purpose-​built space on Upper Brook Street to the south of the city centre near the University and has a large free car park. This is one of Manchester’s largest restaurants seating 300 people and is the first of the successful Chinese concept supermarkets –meets-​restaurants.
The food is classic Cantonese most of the staff are from Hong Kong and the dim sum here is a specialty. They have a large selection of dim sum presented on a separate menu divided into sweet steamed, and fried. The food and service are excellent, it maybe slightly pricier than the rest, but it’s well worth it. Tai pan also offer good-​value business lunches on week days at bargain price of £5.95.

Half price dim sum every day before 5pm? Yes please!
and free unlimited tea to boot! This place is fantastic. Sited above an ugly looking, but very handy, asian cash n’ carry, Tai Pan is actually quite a posh restaurant which is often packed with Chinese families (unlike most of Chinatown, which is a good sign), especially at the weekends.
I’ve never eaten of the a la carte because it’s too expensive. The dim sum are amazing though. I’ve tried all of them at least 4 times. Top tip: if you can read chinese then ask for the chinese menu as it offers twice as many delicious things as the english version. If you can’t read chinese then still ask for the chinese menu and pick things randomly and you won’t be disappointed. The formula for working out how many dim sum to order is: 3n (where n = number of people).
Recommended dishes: Chicken feet, Cha Shao Bao (sweet BBQ pork dumplings), Shao Mai, Tripe with chilli and spring onion, and the Steamed black bean ribs.