Manchurian Legends takes Emma McAlpine on a voyage of discovery to the land of chicken gizzards.
Forget sweet and sour chicken. Chinatown and its Soho neighbours now offer plenty of culinary diversity on top of your typical Cantonese fare, from the messy Mongolian hotpots you can commandeer in Little Lamb to Barshu's spicy Sichuanese offal. New opening Manchurian Legends (owned by the same people behind Leong's), specialises in Dongbei cooking, from the cold north-east region of China. Formerly known as Manchuria, north-east China borders Mongolia and Russia and consequently you'll find a lot of the food is hearty, spicy and filling. Cheaper, more substantial starches than rice are favoured, so bread, dumplings and noodles are prevalent on the menu.
The interior of Manchurian Legends is dictinctly 'no frills', with black formica tables and hard seats. We are seated on one of three tables downstairs, but a quick trip to the loo reveals a bustling top floor, a good sign I muse, as my fellow diners are certainly not here for the luxurious furnishings. With over 150 dishes, ranging from the quirkier Dongbei specialities like shredded pig intestines with chilli and pepper to more familiar Cantonese dishes like crispy seaweed, the menu is massive. It takes me at least 20 minutes to work out what to order. My friend and I decide to opt for as many Dongbei (labelled Manchurian) dishes as possible and all arrive at roughly the same time, until our table resembles a medieval banquet and the other diners begin to stare.
We kick off with sea kelp and rib soup (£3), a salty, clear broth with fatty bits of belly pork rib and thick strips of squeaky green kelp. Simple and nourishing, it reminds me of the restorative powers of Jewish chicken soup. Lucky then that it comes in such a small bowl, as there's plenty more where that came from. We share two 'Manchurian BBQ skewers' (£1.50 each): one lamb, one squid. Rolled in cumin seeds, chilli flakes and salt; they are zingy and perfectly tender, with lovely and crisp chargrilled edges.
There's nothing dainty about the pork and chinese cabbage dumplings. For £5, we get eight thick, flabby crescent moons; the kind which you can't quite fit in your mouth and attempt to bite in half, leaving salty broth dribbling down your chin. Delicious. Out of the appetisers (although there's certainly no order of ceremony in this place), only the cold five spices beef disappoints; the meat rubbery in texture and lacking any hint of seasoning.
We decide to be more adventurous with the main courses, and try out stir fried chicken gizzards and hearts. This turns out to be a step too far. The green chilli and spring onion sauce is good, as are the meaty little chicken hearts but the gizzards are gristly and grind on the teeth, which, to be fair, is exactly what you'd expect of a gizzard. A more satisfactory decision comes in the shape of 'Xin Jiang fried lamb' (£9.50), recommended by our waitress (always listen to the experts). Thin slices of lamb are stir-fried with coriander roots, onion, chilli, cumin and garlic; resulting in a wonderfully earthy and fiery dish that we keep returning to throughout the meal.
One of the best things we eat is spicy green beans with minced pork (£9.50), comparatively expensive as a side dish but worth every penny. Blackened but not bitter, with more chilli and crispy garlic, we both agree we would happily come back and order this as a main course. Our last order (yes we managed even more) is braised pork with glass noodles. This is perhaps the richest in flavour, with butter-soft pork belly sitting on top of thin, soupy noodles cooked in five spice, garlic and ginger.
"That's good, that's good, that's good and that's good," says my dining companion, jabbing his chopsticks at almost every plate.
"I'll be sure to add those helpful comments to my review", I reply sarcastically, although I can't argue. We're too full for pudding but we do manage to cool the fire in our bellies with some almond bubble tea: an ambrosial glass of cold, almond-flavoured milk, with weird balls of black tapioca in the bottom.
Chinatown and Soho are areas of London I'd like to think I knew well gastronomically, but there's always somewhere new and exciting to visit. Invariably, this results in the odd disappointment but it's safe to say Manchurian Legends is not one of them.
No website yet but address is 12 Macclesfield Street W1D 5BP.
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