The Mandarin Chinese Restaurant

The Mandarin Chinese Restaurant
2-3, The Parade
Alderley Edge
Cheshire
SK9 7JX
Tel: 01625 584434

A rather unusual location for a restaurant, in a parade of shops, which can only be regarded, rather kindly, as a little out of place in Alderley Edge. Anybody who knows Alderley Edge will probably understand what I mean. Nevertheless, you can’t always judge a book by its cover as they say, and that is what I discovered with the Mandarin.

The restaurant is fairly large, sympathetically decorated and internally a pleasant contrast to the exterior location. One good thing about the location is that it does have a decent sized car park, and so anybody dining in the evening could park his or her vehicle directly outside the restaurant.

A party of ten of us descended on the Mandarin for lunch on a Friday, and we had pre-ordered a lunchtime ‘banquet’ of a selection of main course dishes, including vegetarian dishes and rice.

We had a round of drinks and waited for the food to be served. The food was delivered to the table promptly and consisted of lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork, beef in blackbean sauce, stir fried vegetables and also a couple of small vegetarian dishes (sweet and sour mushrooms and an aubergine dish if I recall correctly) for the vegetarians in our party. This was all served with served with egg fried rice. The advantage of sharing a number of dishes was that we all got to try bits of each one.

The lemon chicken was excellent, with tender pieces of chicken fillet, in a light batter covered in a sweet but sharp lemon sauce. The sweet and sour pork was equally pleasant, as were the other dishes. Extra rice was volunteered without prompting and all of us enjoyed a well-prepared, tasty and satisfying lunch.

I would comment, on studying the menu in preparation for a possible evening visit, that although we all enjoyed the lunch immensely, the a la carte menu prices appeared a little expensive. I won’t let that put me off visiting in the evening though, as I sampled enough at lunchtime to know that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Verdict – recommended.

Phil.
August 2001