Reviewing lunch time food and evening dining in Manchester's city centre
Posts tagged curry
Rice, Piccadilly Gardens
11 year ago
Another late lunch and another decision to treat myself.
My lunch companion was Stevo again and as he was paying he made the decision – after a short walk from the office, we went to RICE
Being as we were having a late lunch (2.30pm), it was fairly quiet when we arrived – no queue, but lots of people still eating. I opted for the Nasi Goreng whilst Stevo had the Thai Green Curry with rice. The cost was £10.98 for the 2 (including our discount for having Piccadilly Partnership cards) and within 5 minutes we were walking back to the office with our food.
My Nasi Goreng was very tasty and I managed to get through it all. It contained plenty of chicken and prawns and the sauce it was cooked in gave it a lovely flavour. A good score – 4 out of 5.
Stevo’s Thai Green Curry. Packed with a good amount of chicken and the vegetable were cooked very well – they still had a great crunch to them. He thought it was very good but was spicier than usual which was the only problem – also a 4 out of 5.
In addition, the service was good and fast, the food boxes were crammed full and the food was piping hot. My only problem with RICE is the price – if it was less than a fiver each, it would be much more stomachable.
Grand Buffet, 48/50 Withworth Street, Manchester
11 year ago
Curry buffet – All You Can Eat/Eat All You Can for £8, includes refillable soft drink.
Curry, unlike say, Chinese food (or a platter of chicken drumsticks) does not lend itself well to the whole Scoff What You Can buffet deal. Reason being you reach your curry-consumption limit by filling up an awful lot quicker than you do when topping off your duck pancakes with rice + noodles + more rice + more noodles all smothered with miscellaneous meats and sauces. Which is odd, because they’re very similar dishes in theory. Meat, sauce, rice. Maybe it’s the spiciness of curry that brings you to a halt faster.
I found myself deep into my third plate of curry buffet when, embarrassingly, my body came to a complete stop and I was no longer able to feed. The curry sweats intensified as I briefly considered the possibility of me suffering a minor stroke there and then. Eventually I realised I was undergoing the curious condition of being “full”, whilst still having food on my plate. My “raised-in-the-80s” instincts kicked in as I thought of all the starving children in Africa and I anxiously endeavoured to at least finish all the meat remaining on my plate, but to no avail.
The food itself was actually good quality for a buffet, freshly made, loads of choice, all the old favourites: tasty chicken tikka massala, potent madras, beef and lamb dishes, veggie options, rices, naans, for some reason onion rings, poppadum-preaches, the works. Also included was the option to run along the drinks machine topping your beverage up with ginger ale, irn bru, coke, sprite and everything else into one eye-watering glass of George’s Marvellous Medicine.
The kicker, however, was the price. £8 is far too much for what it is – you can get a nice meal for that in city centre. Maybe Grand Buffet works best as a one-off treat when there’s a few of you wanting a spicy curry fix, or maybe if you’re in the middle of an all day session and need sustenance quick; and with a sort of out-of-the-way cafe ambience, it suffices but doesn’t impress.
Rice, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester
01 year ago
by Mister Tum
in Fast Food Chains
Chicken Biryani with rice.
Normally you’d get a curry from a curry house, but unfortunately, due to being challenged by a fellow foodie and having the 6 loyalty stamps saved up, this reviewer had to forego his usual awesome Nasi Goren to experiment with this dish instead. A pretty standard but sauceless curry that was spicy enough to cause flop sweats but without the prevailing ‘have-I-injured-myself’ after-burn of, say, a particularly piquant Madras from your local curry house. If you’re going to bite the no-diet bullet and hit Rice up for one of its excellent dishes you might as well go with a reliable Nasi Goren or Malaysian chilli chicken, rather than squandering your attention on this arid but still appetising Biryani. Don’t settle for good when you can have great!
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