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.
Meaty congee with thousand year old egg at Mei Dim. / Image: The Manc Eats
Steamed beef tripe with ginger and spring onion at Mei Dim, pictured above egg yolk custard buns. / Image: The Manc Eats
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.
Egg yolk custard buns at Mei DIm. / Image: The Manc Eats
Cheung fun with pork at Mei Dim. / Image: The Manc Eats
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
A historic Stockport pub has officially become a listed building
The Angel Inn pub in Stockport has officially become the thriving Greater Manchester borough’s latest listed building.
Being granted Grade II-listed status following an extensive visit and survey by Historic England (HE), Stockport Market Place’s Angel Inn may have had a lick of paint amidst the ‘Old Town Revival’ over the last decade or so, but the pub itself was erected back in the 16th century.
Reopened as one of the area’s most beloved boozers back in 2018, whilst still maintaining key fixtures and that feeling of authenticity, it harks back to the town’s Cheshire roots and taps into a deep vein of local culture.
The assessment, which was completed earlier this month, means that Angel Inn has been recognised as having special architectural or historic significance – i.e. the definition of a listed building.
Writing in a post on social media, the government-backed English heritage organisation detailed that while the inn predates the Early Modern/post-medieval period, the Angel‘s frame is comprised of wood from the 15th century.
But it gets even more interesting than that…
As well as being one of a select few surviving, traditional wattle-and-daub structures in the UK – nearby Bramall Hall being another (and a technique that had died out by the 18th century) – a close inspection of the internal floorboards unearthed something truly fascinating.
It just so happens that tests by HE proved that one particular plank of flooring “was cut from a tree alive in 1086, the year the Domesday Book was completed: the oldest government record held in The National Archives, commissioned by William the Conqueror.
How bloody cool is that?
It’s also worth noting that it’s genuinely a brilliant boozer and one of the most popular watering holes you’ll find in the town centre, promising a cosy interior, an intimate little outdoor area out back and serving plenty of regional ales.
You only have to glance at the exterior to clue into its age, let alone what there is to be found inside.Way back when.Credit: Historic England (handout)/Stockport Archives
Although they say it’s likely that the floorboard in question was originally cut for an earlier building situated in the same location, it still goes to show how old this particular North West settlement is.
“The name ‘Angel Inn’ dates from as early as 1769, though the site’s hospitality roots extend further, with references to “Cotterell’s inn” used for sequestrators’ meetings in the 1640s, who met to organise the confiscation of property of supporters of King Charles I during The English Civil War”, HE went on to add.
Angel Inn is one of only a handful of venues like this in Greater Manchester and Cheshire; safe to say a lot of time, effort and money are being put into preserving these links to the past.
Winsome, one of the newest restaurants on Manchester’s dining scene, has gone and received a seriously glowing review in The Guardian this weekend.
Legendary restaurant criticGrace Dent said that the British bistro ‘may well be my new favourite restaurant’, lauding chef patron Shaun Moffat’s ‘elegant but plentiful modern cooking’.
She said that there’s even a teeny touch of Toby Carvery in their Sunday offering, with meaty and saucy dishes and ‘cartoon-esque XL yorkshire puddings’.
Winsome opened back in March under the steer of three hospitality heavyweights – ex-Edinburgh Castle chef Shaun Moffat, former Schofields head bartender Tom Fastiggi, and Belzan founder Owain Williams.
It’s a beautiful, stripped-back space at the foot of the Whitworth Locke aparthotel and Moffat’s first venture as a chef patron.
Based on this Guardian review, he’s doing a pretty good job so far…
Grace Dent said of Winsome’s nostalgic yet modern menu (featuring dippy eggs and puddings that sound like school dinner puds): “This is Cool Britannia wearing a napkin bib with a side portion of rhubarb jelly and custard for pudding.”
Novelty crockery at Winsome. Credit: The Manc GroupChef patron Shaun Moffat at Winsome. Credit: The Manc GroupDippy egg and asparagus. Credit: The Manc GroupInside WInsome on Princess Street. Credit: The Manc Group
She also wrote that it’s ‘far from a novelty restaurant’ in spite of its animal-shaped crockery.
And Dent added that while there’s an element of fine dining, it’s unpretentious enough that you’re happy to smear it all over the tablecloths and, indeed, yourself.
‘Deeply nostalgic’, ‘forward-thinking fine dining without any of the faff’, is how she described her Winsome experience.
“This is confident, clever cooking that stays just the right side of earnest, or at least as earnest as a chef can be when he also serves up a dessert that is essentially a 1980s school sponge pudding with a scoop of milk ice-cream flecked with multicoloured sprinkles, or hundreds and thousands as they will for ever be known in my heart,” she wrote.
Grace Dent’s Guardian review concluded with: “Winsome may well be my new favourite restaurant, and it’s the new, big, generous beating heart of Manchester hospitality. It’s classy but come-all – bring your gran, bring your baby, no one need feel conspicuous.
“There’s something about the place that makes me want to use it as a canteen, not least out of sheer curiosity as to what Moffat will put on the menu next. Great cooking, and forward-thinking fine dining without any of the faff.
“Bring your appetite and don’t wear pale colours. Aaah, Manchester, you have so much to answer for. Winsome will seriously impact your waistline.”
Winsome said in a post on Instagram: “It doesn’t get much better than that! We’re over the moon, full of pride and could not be more grateful to the team who’ve worked so hard to help us deliver this dream.”
Georgina Pellant -
20th January 2023 
