I ate chicken feet and thousand-year-old eggs in Manchester’s Chinatown – and I loved it
The Manc's Food and Drink Editor took a deep dive into Chinese delicacies at Mei Dim, and fell in love with its baskets of chicken feet, thousand year old egg congee and beef tripe.
Chicken feet, tripe, and thousand-year-old eggsmight not be the first things you think to orderwhen visiting a restaurant in Manchester’s Chinatown, but if you’re paying a visit to Mei Dim then you really need to give it a go. If not, you’re seriously missing out.
A non-descript basement canteen tucked underground on Faulkner Street, from the outside its laminated pictoral menus give very little clue as to the delights within. But they’re very much there for the taking, if you’re daring enough to step out of your comfort zone.
Visiting on a chilly Monday lunchtime, this is exactly what I’ve vowed to do – with a little help from a friend who not only speaks fluent Cantonese, but also lived in Hong Kong as a child and has a chef for a dad.
Armed with knowledge, he’s the best dining partner I could ask for: patiently explaining the menu to me and then delighting when I announce, at the end of our meal, that I’ve fallen in love with chicken feet. ‘At last’, he says, he’s found a white person who will eat ‘the weird stuff’ with him. It’s the start of a beautiful new chapter for us.
After some back and forth, followed by some wrangling with the staff in Cantonese, he manages to convince them to give us a sheet of paper to ‘tick off’ our dim sum choices. This, I’m told, is how it’s meant to be done – with the staff taking one half, and leaving the other on your table to count off the dishes as they arrive.
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At this point I realise it’s a good thing I’m not alone, because I really have no idea what I’m doing. Although there is an English menu provided, there’s also a second specials menu that has absolutely no translation.
The service is also perfunctory at best, or at least it is before they warm up to us. Left to my own devices, my awkward self would’ve probably already upped and left, only to miss out on one of the best meals of my life.
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We reel off our order: steamed chicken feet and beef tripe, a steaming bowl of congee (made with a thousand year old egg), steamed custard and egg yolk buns, roasted pork cheung fun, and Shanghai-style soup dumplings.
‘Have we gone too weird?’ we wonder out loud, before deciding no, not at all. At this point, I’m very much in for a penny, in for a pound.
It doesn’t take long before our first dish arrives, a plate of slippery-looking cheung fun – a thin, gelatinous and slightly chewy rice noodle roll filled with pork then drizzled in soy sauce.
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It’s followed, swiftly, by a tower of bamboo baskets, filled with chicken feet, steamed beef tripe with ginger and spring onion, plump steamed custard buns and our steamed soup dumplings – all dumped, rather unceremoniously might I add, on our table.
Once the curtain of steam between us evaporates, we survey the spoils. My nerves about eating feet dispelled, I take some quick instruction on how to remove the skin from the bones with my tongue then get stuck in.
Quickly realising these feet are 99% skin (in my opinion, one of the best parts of the bird) it dawns on me: I’ve finally found a dish where it’s acceptable to only eat chicken skin, without ingesting any actual meat. No wonder so many people rave about this as a comfort food.
And as for that thousand-year-old egg? If anything, it’s a misnomer. A couple of weeks, or months old at best, sitting in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime and rice hulls makes it rich in flavour and adds a hefty dose of umami to a meaty bowl of congee.
Beyond that, the greatest delights of the day have to be the egg yolk custard buns, satisfactorily oozing their hot golden goo at the slightest pressure. When Giggs grins and tells me that he hasn’t had any this good since leaving Hong Kong, I know we’re on to a winner here.
Although Mei Dim has a distinct lack of social media presence, the fact that most of its clientele are Chinese speaks volumes as to the quality. It also has a great word-of-mouth reputation, which is how I stumbled across it in the first place.
That said, it’s not going to be for everyone and there are plenty of keyboard warriors who’ve taken the time to slag this place off. Quite a few scathing TripAdvisor reviews bemoan its old school decor and lack of ‘friendly’ service, but I rather like it. If anything, it makes it feel more authentic.
This is how I remember Chinatown always used to be when growing up, and I think there’s something to be said for a restaurant more interested in what’s coming out of its kitchen than the tables it’s being served on.
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Simply put: if you want to be fawned over, you’re probably best off going elsewhere. But if you want great dim sum, Mei Dim is an absolute must.
Feature image – The Manc Eats
Food & Drink
Electrik Bar in Chorlton is giving away 100 FREE frankfurters to celebrate their latest kitchen collab
Danny Jones
We all love a freebie, so we thought we’d spread the good word of the scran lords by letting you know that Electrik over in Chorlton is giving away 100 free frankfurters to celebrate their newest menu takeover.
The popular neighbourhood bar and kitchen on Wilbraham Road in the South Manchester suburb has had a couple of different foodie collaborations over the past couple of years, with local residents Paramogeddon and Four Side Vegan Pizza being the most recent, but now they’re doing hot dogs.
Welcoming their latest vendors Tisch Und Teller, Electrik will be giving away a total of 100 free frankfurters to the first century of people there this evening.
Bringing a taste of Berlin, Bavaria, Frankfurt and more (with a Manc twist, of course) to the popular pub for the Thursday launch party, all you need to do is order a drink upon arrival to get your hands on a free frankfurter sandwiched between a lovely fluffy roll.
Who doesn’t love a hot dog? Especially when they’re giving them away.
As for Tisch Und Teller (TuT), they’ve been serving up German-inspired favourites from the likes of The Shakespeare in Manchester city centre and Nip and Tipple in Whalley Range since September last year, including some very impressive brunches and Sunday roasts.
But the brand just keeps gaining more traction and now they’re setting up shop in Electrik, we’re sure the word will continue to spread – and fast.
Better still, as advertised on the promo poster, not only will TuT now be serving up their delicious food from Electrik every Thursday-Sunday for the foreseeable but the launch party will also live music by local legend and DJing veteran, Abigail Ward of Ghost Assembly.
Free food, pints and top tunes – what more could you ask for on a random weeknight?
The offer will be available from 6pm tonight and, once again, you have to be among the first 100 people to buy a pint to be eligible for a free frankfurter.
Manchester’s new Instagrammable coffee shop is giving away FREE drinks tomorrow
Emily Sergeant
One of Manchester’s newest Instagrammable coffee shops is giving away free drinks tomorrow ahead of the bank holiday weekend.
With another long weekend right around the corner, and much of Greater Manchester and the UK fortunately looking set to bask in the springtime heat, popular coffee chain, Blank Street – which is one of Manchester city centre’s newest residents, with two sites in Piccadilly Gardens, and on the corner of King Street and Cross Street – has decided it wants to help the country “beat the 3pm slump”.
Ahead of the upcoming bank holiday weekend, the chain is inviting Mancs to “meet for matcha” tomorrow afternoon (Friday 3 May).
The exciting freebie offer is all said to be “inspired by data” that shows that almost half of office workers aren’t taking a break from their desks during the day, even despite research showing that this can boost productivity.
Hundreds of iced matcha lattes will be served up at Blank Street‘s Manchester branch on the corner of King Street and Cross Street between 3pm and 4pm tomorrow.
For anyone “ice cold pick-me-up ahead of the long weekend”, but keen not to tip their employers off, the coffee shop chain has created an online tool to allow workers to discreetly add a matcha moment to their diary.
The brand-new online tool will apparently help to “distract calendar snoopers” by creating a cleverly-named meeting and adding it automatically to Outlook, Google, or Apple calendars – with potential meeting titles that include plenty of corporate jargon to “provide the perfect alibi”.
So, all matcha fans need to do tomorrow afternoon is show the Blank Street team at their chosen branch a meeting in their calendar, and in return, they’ll receive a free small iced matcha latte of their choice from the chain’s delicious spring menu.
Blank Street’s popular matcha offering includes the Classic Matcha, the viral Blueberry Matcha, the silky-smooth White Chocolate Matcha, and the brand-new sumptuous Golden Matcha, so there’s something to “inspire every matcha lover to take a little time out”.
As matcha allows a slow release of caffeine, Blank Street says it’s the “perfect drink” to keep energy levels up throughout the afternoon when you’re stuck at your desk on a Friday.