Plate to Palate | Restaurant review: Bistro Manchu, SoHo - hearty fare

Pan-fried pork dumplings (HK$78) were a good start to the meal, with a hot, juicy, well-flavoured filling, although the thick skins could have had crustier bottoms. For the spicy shredded potatoes (HK$98), the friendly waiter asked how hot we could take it and we told him to bring it on, which was a mistake — we should have asked him to dial it down a bit. Cool (in temperature), crunchy and tongue-tingly spicy, they were masochistically enjoyable; I couldn't stop eating them, even as they made me sweat. Eggplant with garlic, chilli and sesame oil (HK$68) was rich, oily and pungent.

My favourite dishes were the meat ones. The house special garlic chicken (HK$168) was a generous serving of moist chunks of meat with plenty of garlic and dry red chillies. Even better was the sautéed cumin lamb with chillies and coriander (HK$168). We ordered a side dish of moist, pliable and slightly oily thin crêpes (HK$68), which we used as wrappers. The lamb had a strong flavour — it was almost like mutton — but was balanced by the plentiful amount of sweet onions and large pieces of dried chillies. Unfortunately, the very dim lighting meant we couldn't really see which bits were the meat and which were the chillies, so we occasionally had mouthfuls that were more fiery than we wanted them to be.