Hunan review

“The more chillies one eats the more revolutionary one becomes,” Mao, the famous leader of Communist revolution in China, once said.

We agreed about the Chinese leaves though. Quickly stir-fried with salted chillies and sprinkled with the odd goji berry, they were sour and salty and sweet all at once. It worked well.

For what is reputedly the Chairman’s favourite dish, Hunan’s red-braised pork isn’t particularly radicalised. It does, however, come with red peppers, plentiful garlic bulbs and a rustic, slightly caramelised sauce for the People.

Fortunately, the other mains did more to incite if not outright revolution, some approving mastication noises.

Hunan is the latest addition to Chinatown and the sole outlet in Manchester for food from this south-central Chinese province. The food is billed as bolder and hotter than Sichuan’s.

>Yam and pork rib broth

The English-speaking voice of authority on Chinese food, Fuchsia Dunlop, compares them thus: ‘whereas the Sichuanese catered for nobilities and officials dispatched from Beijing, the Hunanese were at the heart of the Great Famine following Mao’s disastrous and militant campaign for 'modernisation', through which 20 million Chinese starved, and those lucky enough to eat knew only of peasant fare.’

And so along with Mao’s red-braised pork (£6.80), we had beer-braised duck (£12.00), Hunan bacon with turnip (£8.80), beef in cumin (£7.80), steamed smoked ribs (£8.80), taro and rib soup (£6.80), and leaves with salted chilies (£5.80). Rib-sticking stuff that tasted noticeably different despite their homogeneous brown-sauce-with-red-bits appearances.

The beer-braised duck, served with a splash of lager sealed in an upturned glass, had warmth and depth imparted from the star anise and cinnamon. The beer wasn’t consistently present, which meant most of us detected no beer whilst one got an overly boozy cube of duck. A minor detail, though, for an otherwise very solid dish.

Chinese leaves with salted chilies

The Hunan bacon dish is the epitome of the precise function of Chinese dishes, which is to send the rice down. It’s a mound of smoky pork with the tangy crunch from the pickled turnip, and enough dried chillies to keep things interesting. For me, this is Hunanese ‘junk food’ at its very best.

Beef with cumin was a raw hit of the spice in an otherwise unremarkable dish. It’s a regional classic, but the Western bit of my palette didn’t find it ‘different’ enough.

Steamed smoked ribs was cured pork, fried then stewed, and served in a bamboo bucket, which may be the only reason it’s under the ‘steamed’ section. The smoked ribs were moreish, but sadly drowned in the stewing liquid, again that samey reddish-brown shade dotted with garlic and chillies, which was getting a little tedious.

Mao's red-braised pork

Hunan bacon with turnips

Thankfully there was a soup and a veg dish to balance out a table of rich flavours. The taro soup was cleansing, the gentle textures of the softened taro and boiled ribs a tonic. It didn’t do as much for my masculine comrades, who were happily inhaling savoury, heavy-hitting spices and stews. We agreed about the Chinese leaves though. Quickly stir-fried with salted chillies and sprinkled with the odd goji berry, they were sour and salty and sweet all at once. It worked well.

The other half of Hunan’s menu has Cantonese dishes. I don’t know about it, nor do I have any inclination to critique it.

I should have done the same and pass over desserts. The sweet potato cakes (£3.80) were a bland greasy flop made worse by a cloying dip of condensed milk, and the dumplings in rice wine (£6.80) needed sugar, more sesame in the dumpling filling, and not floating bits of scrambled eggs.

Debbie, the ever-obliging manageress, noted that the latter was not so much a dessert, but eaten by locals in Hunan as breakfast. In fact, they usually don’t have them this sweet, she said. This fence-sitting amalgamation of breakfast and dessert was eccentric to say the least.

Mao was right. A revolution is not a dinner party. Our dinner party at Hunan restaurant was not a revolution. For that it’d need to crank up the heat and impress with its presentation. It was, however, (save for the desserts) a welcome progression of the branching out of Chinese cuisine in Manchester.

'Desserts'

Rating:	13.5/20
Breakdown:	6.5/10 food 4/5 service 3/5 atmosphere
Address:	Hunan Restaurant 1st Floor, 19-21 George St Manchester 0161 236 8889

Venues are rated against the best examples of their kind: fine dining against the best fine dining, cafes against the best cafes. Following on from this the scores represent: 1-5 saw your leg off and eat it, 6-9 get a DVD, 10-11 if you must, 12-13 if you’re passing,14-15 worth a trip,16-17 very good, 17-18 exceptional, 19 pure quality, 20 perfect. More than 20: Gordo gets carried away

Steamed smoked ribs in bamboo pot