Situated on the cusp of Manchester's Chinese Quarter, Red Chilli deals in robust renditions of regional food without fashionable detours or westernised compromises. The setting is a pink-walled basement on the corner of Portland Street, with black lacquered screens and decorative displays in framed arrangements on the walls.

The regular menu is familiar assortment of mainstream dishes, with easy options like hot-and-sour soup, aromatic crispy duck, sliced pork with black fungus and sizzling fillet of beef with green pepper and black bean sauce. The kitchen's real strength, however, is its repertoire of peasant-style specialities from Beijing and Szechuan, which have real fire, potency and zest.

Among the esoteric delights on the 'hot and spicy' menu are pungent hot pots and casseroles (sea bass with Szechuan preserved vegetables or lamb belly with beancurd and chilli, for example) and anatomically challenging ideas like 'husband and wife lung slices', pig's intestines with Chinese black pudding or ox tripe in stock. And who would dare tackle Mrs Spotty's beancurd? Of course, there are less scary pleasures – spiced hot poached beef with red chillies, stir-fried scallops with celery and 'lantern' pepper, and classic Szechuan dan-dan noodles, for example. Red Chilli has branches at 6 Great George Street, Leeds and 25 Market Street, Bacup.

Red Chilli is also featured in: Good Food Guide, Hardens

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Chinese

Mr Zhang

Lunch: 12.00 through until
Dinner: 10.30pm (11.30pm Fri-Sat)

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