Reviews in Northern Quarter

the food is out of this world... best food in town

As a first timer, i loved the atmosphere, decor & building, beer and food.

March 2008.Had not visited Bluu for well over 12 months and now feel this was a sad mistake to neglect an old favourite.We can honestly say we had the best meal since we can't remember, and we did compare with lots of restaurants both in the UK, on the Continent and South Africa. A new menu so lots more excuses to go back and try other dishes. The service was excellent, attentive but unobtrusive. The only (minor) let down was a half melted sorbet - but at that stage I would have forgiven them almost anything.

Tried to book a table using my City Scene card but they declined, saying they needed 24 hours notice (not stated in the City Scene booklet) which considering we wanted the table at 6.30pm I thought was ludicrous. We were meeting friends there anyway so ended up eating there anyway - we ordered our main courses and had drunk virtually all our wine before the meal came (had to chase it up with the waitress first). To be honest the gravy looked as though it needed some more time in the microwave, it appeared to be reheated. Was not impressed at all. When we complained about it the waitress was quite rude and seemed to take everything too personally. Will probably not be using my 50% discount.

Incredible, amazing, brilliant, beautiful, friendly, tasty, words do not do this place justice! Cannot recommend it strongly enough!

Lammars is the worst place in manchester to eat. I went there for my 30th Birthday, ive never seen anything like it. If you want food poisoning this is a fantastic place to go.

Great place, great value. Enjoyed!

Pleasant atmosphere, good service, lovely rice!

Love the vegan options and great service

Ning is everything I want on a night out weather it’s a special occasion with friends or a chilled out week night evening - chilled out atmosphere, friendly service, fab food and great interior design. The starters are amazing, I wish I could order the prawn & tofu fritters for starter, main and desert. The wine list is innovative but not pretentious, and I love it that you can go glam with one of the seasonal cocktails. Service is attentive and friendly but not in your face and the bill always surprisingly reasonable for the high standard of food. I recommend this place for every occasion.

We went to Sweet Mandarin for Christmas Eve and it was a wonderful experience. I would highly recommend this place, even though it is off the beaten track. We went for the banquet and I think it was the best hot and sour soup I have ever tasted. Actually, it was the best Chinese we had in a long time. We loved the aromatic crispy duck which was just crispy and chewy enough without being dry. In particular, I would recommend the Lily Kwok's curry. Its quite a different curry from the Indian curries. This one is creamy and mild, very flavoursome and unique to Sweet Mandarin. I will be coming back in the New Year. Thanks for taking the stress out of Christmas.

EAT HERE AT YOUR PERIL - this restaurant is truly APPALLING. The food is disgusting, the service verges on the downright insulting and the standards of hygeine are highly questionable. I went to Sweet Mandarin in a party of three on Christmas Eve and it was the most horrendous dining experience in memory. This is not an exaggeration - we have all suffered with illness since we ate there. My girlfriend and I were unable to eat anything at all on Christmas Day, and are still feeling nauseaous as I write this. I intend to make a personal visit to Manchester City Council's enviromental health department as soon as they re-open. Although we live round the corner from Sweet Mandarin and eat out regularly, we had never eaten there before, mainly because common-sense tells you not to dine at a place that never seems to have any customers. But on Christmas Eve we were stuck for somewhere to eat and took a chance on it . What a terrible mistake. Upon arriving, my girlfriend visited the ladies toilet and was disgusted to find that the hand-towel was completely sodden and BLACK with dirt. We should have taken that as a warning, but our hunger got the better of us and we ordered the £25-a-head banquet. From the off, it became clear that the kitchen was re-heating old food and trying to pass it off as fresh. The opening course was a foul-tasting hot-and-sour-soup, and my friend commented on the prawns - which tasted off. The prawns were supposed to be 'king-sized' but had shrunken to the size of tiny shrimps - a tell-tale sign that they have been cooked for a very long period of time. We couldn't eat our soup - but we hoped the other 'starters' would be better. We were disappointed. The spring rolls had obviously been deep-fried several times and were dark-coloured and dripping with grease. The seaweed was very heavily salted (presumably to hide the true flavour) and the spare ribs had virtually no meat on them. Then came the crispy aromatic duck. What a joke. There was nothing aromatic about the duck - because it HADN'T been cooked in the oven. It had been dropped into the deep-fat chip frier! The meat was dried-out and sinewy and was virtually inedible. To add insult to injury, the 'pancakes' that came with it were ROCK-HARD and COLD! The texture was akin to playing cards. We complained to the waitress, who said she would inform the chef, but she then simply walked back to her position in front of the bar (there were NO other customers) and left us with our dirty plates and un-eaten duck. After complaining again, she eventually cleared our table - five minutes later! We decided to hang around for the main-courses, as we were still hungry. And the food could only improve, couldn't it? No. It didn't. The beef in black bean sauce was so chewy it was inedible. The 'clay-pot' chicken was luke-warm and had absolutely NO flavour whatsoever - and the 'speciality' 'Lily Kwok curried chicken' consisted simply of pieces of pre-boiled chicken put into the type of cheap green curry sauce you find in your local chinese chippy. It all came served with fried-rice - which contained more of the 'off' smelling prawns. Needless to say, we ate very little of it and complained to the waitress/manageress - but we found her response truly appalling - even more so than the food! We were not rude and calmly explained why we were dissatisfied, but she offered NO apology, NO explanation and made no discount on the bill. She simply arrogantly shrugged her shoulders and walked off, refusing to make eye contact with any of us. As we left, I told her we would tell all our friends just how bad the food was. But she just carried on ignoring us. It is, of course, clear why Sweet mandarin is always empty. And after experiencing it for ourselves, we can only imagine that they will probably go out of business soon. And that would be no bad thing - because I wouldn't wish the experience on anybody. What a disgrace.

We visited for lunch and found the food modestly priced . There was plenty of variety and flavours were new and interesting. The cookery course was friendly, professional and inspirational.

Have just wasted my lunch hour at the 'all you can eat' buffet at Ning - a joke in itself as there was very little on offer and what was there was cold and bland, unless you like small, greasy spring rolls!! Not impressed and I'm still hungry!!

Unfortunately, I have just wasted £6 and a lunch hour at the Thursday Buffet Lunch. There was a lack of food at this 'All you can eat' Buffet. What food was available was cold and bland.

Terrible. My friends and I visited at lunch time for the buffet after reading the rave reviews and there was very little and sometimes no food out - not even rice. What we did manage to taste was cold and fairly bland. We received no apology for this and I have to rank it as amongst the worst meals I have had.

We've eaten here twice and on both occasions we had a lovely meal. The service was particularly good when we beat the crowds and got in on a Friday before 6.00. The staff are very friendly which makes it more memorable. Definitely recommended plus you've got the advantage of the good nightlife that's around the Northern Qtr.

My food came out cold twice in the same evening!!