Yang Sing

This is a review purely for the takeaway part of yang sing, we’ve always been a little bit too lazy to make the effort to sit in and enjoy a nice dinner.
I’ve had takeaway from here on a few occasions and it never disappoints. We nearly always order the char sui bao buns, which are fluffy, sweet and delicious. We also tried a few of the other starters including the beef and ginger parcels and the prawn dumplings. All completely delicious. Of the mains I can’t recommend the bees in black bean sauce enough, a little sweet, a little salty and a little spicy. Perfect for me. I also have it on good authority that the pork sweet and sour is fantastic too.
The only tiny thing I find off putting is how extensive the menu is, I’m indecisive at the best of times, so it always takes me a lot of time to decide what I’m having!

This is becoming a bit of a habit… the duck! To be specific BBQ roast duck is delicious. The garlic spinach was fresh, the chicken and black bean was flavorful. Portion wise you will be happy that the slightly higher prices result in larger portions.
Located in Chinatown Yang Sing is a great option for groups or those looking for something a tad more oooh la la. The interior is modern with very efficient and friendly service.

I have eaten at the Yang Sing before; it is always a special occasion sort of place for me, although their dim sum menu means you can eat here at a reasonable price. It is hard for me to feel objective when reviewing restaurants often as I try to just enjoy each visit as if it is my first. This Sunday though has made it hard as this is the place I came for my graduation meal in 2006 which brought back memories of the stunning meal we enjoyed back then by a small party of friends and family.
The dim sum here is still excellent, and if we had only had dim sum I am sure I would be giving the Yang Sing four or five stars, unfortunately for them I also had another dish.
The ‘Succulent Fresh Lobster from the Shores of North Wales’ in a ginger sauce, sounds lovely, but I cannot forgive this restaurant for overcooking such a wonderful ‘fish’. The problem with customers today is they tend not to understand if something is overcooked, and I know this is made harder by getting something in a good sauce. Succulent fresh lobster should be exactly that (dramatic pause), succulent and not dry, the sauce makes you believe you are eating something ‘succulent’, but dry overcooked fish remains exactly this even with a good sauce. Good lobster is also good without an accompanying sauce; admittedly if I am eating it on its own (very rare occurrence for me) a little melted butter is goes a long way.
I can’t give the Yang Sing more than 3 stars on this occasion because they ruined two things for me, a perfectly good memory of food from 2006 and a lobster that should have been succulent.

Hmmmm… the Yang Sing is one of the best known Chinese restaurants in the UK if not Europe and so I was expecting quite a lot. From some reviews I read online it seems to be living off its past glories and I would have to agree.
I was trying to decide where to take my Mum for lunch in town as it was around 4pm and most of the lunch offers have ended, when I suddenly thought about the Yang Sing. It’s coming up to Chinese New Year at the moment and I was really in the mood for some dim sum. I had a look online and noticed they offer an afternoon tea menu option till 5pm– great.
The afternoon tea is £17.50 and that comes with a glass of bubbly and choice of tea. We had a pot of the Jasmine tea. As it was mid afternoon there were only a few tables of people so it was quite quiet and the service was fine. For some reason I was expecting the interior to be a bit more grandiose than it was. The restaurant is downstairs in the basement.
Anyway we were seated and shortly after the dim sum started to arrive. It was all just a bit lacklustre. I love dim sum and on my recent trip to Hong Kong I had it for breakfast and lunch every day. But this is nothing like the tastiness of the dim sum you get over there.
In hindsight I think this is down to the particular selection they give you and I would have rather ordered individual dim sum items off the menu, maybe a soup and then a proper main dish and some fried rice.
The Sui Mai were fine, as were the duck spring rolls, the cuttlefish bumblebee and the paper wrapped prawns. The pork bun wasn’t brilliant as I like them when they are salty and sweet, crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. This was just… a steamed, flavourless pork bun. The seafood yam tart in sauce was… not good. I’m presuming the plate of clear jelly was the pan fried water chestnut cake– it reminded me of this turnip cake I had in HK, it’s not to my taste but some might like it. The crème patisserie bun for dessert was just again flavourless– a doughy bun with a tiny bit of custard in the middle.
I really can only comment on their dim sum so if you’re going there for dinner don’t let this out you off too much. For me though, I much preferred my experience at the Little Yang Sing round the corner in Chinatown.

Absolutely incredible food, we ordered the sampler banquet so we could try a bit of everything, it’s pricey but definitely worth it. The dim sum starters were delicious, we had beef and ginger dumplings, steamed pork buns, tofu rice wraps, curried beef doughnuts and this was followed by the most amazing, melt in the mouth Chinese ribs and grilled lamb cutlet. We were pretty stuffed just from the starter so when the next course of stir fry chicken lettuce wraps, stir fried rice, marinaded pork with greens and salt and pepper beef skillet arrived it took all our effort to solider on. The décor was classier than expected, very modern with dark greys and reds and generally pretty cosy. The food came out pretty quickly, as soon as a course was cleared away the next arrived. My only qualm is that we were left waiting for a jug of water for a while, other than that the service was great and the food incredible.

Looking for a yum cha or dim sum lunch, we headed to the yang sing to help heal us from the night before. We were starving so rocked up at 12 lunchtime without booking which was not a problem, we were seated straight away. Considering the time on a Sunday the restaurant was already getting full proving this place is still popular (I hadn’t been for years and didn’t know if it was getting beyond itself or not.)
Instead of ordering from the dim sum menu, we had the ‘afternoon tea’ option so we didn’t have to use our brains, which was a pre chosen set of savoury and sweet dishes with a glass of prosecco. However, the waitress had a really hard time understanding we wanted this and that we only wanted it for two people (£17 per head) instead of six people. Unsure why she thought this considering there were only two of us. I don’t think we looked hungry enough to eat six portions. But anyway.
The food arrived fairly quickly and was good as can only be expected. Some of the choices I assume were nice but not to my taste (a sweet dessert cube of grey looking jelly kind of resembled a jelly fish in looks and taste). Also, we HAD ordered some rice as an accompaniment but got these incredibly weird vegetable rolls which looked like they had been rolled up in raw squid instead. Waitress strikes again.
Overall the food was ok but I did expect more from the yang sing in terms of service. I left feeling full and satisfied but to be honest, I probably wouldn’t rush to go back.

One thing that I really think Yang Sing needs a little credit for is their Dim Sum/​Dumplings — they are very tasty. We had a few other dishes, which were great too.
I have a better Hot and Sour soup, this one had a twist of Britian, as the soup had peas in it — I ave never seen that before. The place was very nice, good and clean in total. A good place to go for lunch or dinner.

Looking for somewhere for our team at work to hold our regular ‘social outing’, my workmate spotted that YS held a monthly ping pong night (first Thursday of every month) on one of their upper floors — the place is massive, I never realised they had so much space.
We booked two tables for an hour (£20 for each one) and you can have unlimited players so that suited us perfectly. There’s a bar up there and you can order from the dim sum menu, but we planned to eat downstairs in the restaurant afterwards.
Cue an hour of ping pong antics, one of the highlights being testing our ‘skills’ when facing a dragon firing 30 balls at you at high speed. I got 9. Must do better. It became quite busy up there so book online early to avoid missing out.
And so to the dining experience. The sprawling restaurant on the lower levels was really bustling, though it didn’t take them long to prepare a table for us (we just winged it and turned up without booking). Our drinks orders were taken promptly and delivered along with prawn crackers, which were annihilated in 17 seconds.
Everyone ordered something different from the (massive) menu so that we could share and try several dishes. My favourite was the sliced duck with winter bamboo but they were all pretty decent taste-​wise, with the accompanying egg fried rice providing some bulk filler. The service was efficient and very friendly, we were well taken care of.
A great evening of fun and Far Eastern foodie delights. We’ll be coming back again.

We ate a dim sum lunch there yesterday. The Shu Mai were good, but the char siu bau and the the beef meatballs were mediocre. The meat had a strange texture as if it were all variety meat rather than muscle. The worst part was the poor service. We were able to order quickly and our crab and sweet corn soup (bland with chewy corn and very little crab) arrived quickly but the rest of the meal took 45 minutes to appear with no explanations given. Not planning to give them a second chance after this inhospitable experience.

My wife and I shared the set dinner for two and my daughter order the noodle soup with beef balls. The set dinner has a nice set of appetizers, a little dim sum, soup, and two mains. The appetizers were tasty (although all fried something). The kitchen as out of beef balls so we had to substitute the fish balls for my daughter’s noodle soup. But, the soup was quite good, the broth excellent. The staff notice my daughter was raiding pretty much every course in our set dinner for two and quietly brought her the needed plates/​bowls to facilitate her sampling. I found the set dinner for two to being a nicely chosen mixture of dishes and well-​executed in terms of both preparation and timing; however, I also found it highly westernized chinese food. And this last part was a little disappointing. The value/​price ratio only gets them to three stars. Perhaps this would be nudged up if ordering beyond the Set Dinner and trying other dishes.

Very good — i ate here with a large group and we all had different dishes so I tasted about six different dishes each as good as the next. It is supposed to be one of the first Chinese resteraunts in Manchester — not sure if that’s true but the staff were efficient and pretty friendly. I saw the bill (wasn’t paying it foruntately) and it was a bit higher than I would have expected so it may be a little on the pricey side. i definitely enjoyed it though.

I will start by saying that I have been looking forward to eating here for months, having heard good things about the place. Finally getting round to it yesterday to celebrate my boyfriend and I’s anniversary I was incredibly disappointed and left actually feeling angry! First of all we noticed how quiet it was for a Saturday afternoon with only 2 other tables, yay this would normally mean attentive and quick service in any other establishment. I thought it was odd we were seated at a tiny table given the abundance of larger ones and considering we could be ordering a few dishes each coupled with the unlikelihood of a mad rush of diners.
Being vegetarian I had already checked out the menus online to check that there would be options for me. We eventually ordered just a few dishes each, figuring we would probably order dessert. As the food came out, the waitress didn’t describe them, just plonked them on the table slightly mumbling. As a result, I ended up eating one of my boyfriend’s duck beancurd wraps as I had ordered veg beancurd rolls and the menu didn’t mention beancurd at all with the duck.
Next big disappointment for me was the arrival of the aubergine dish I ordered, again the vegetarian menu didn’t describe this very well but when I tasted it, it seemed very fishy. The veggie menu does state that they use meat alternatives so I tried to be open minded, but it was a good thing I asked the waitress as she told me it isn’t actually vegetarian. So I didn’t get the dish I asked for despite even pointing to it on the vegetarian menu at the time of ordering. She took this away and I didn’t order another dish to replace it as by this point, the service is proving to be so bad I just want to finish and leave.
The food itself was underwhelming and a little bland. I did ask for soy sauce (which I would have assumed to be standard and on tables by default) and the waitress eventually brought this over after a 5 minute chat with another member of staff, all the time our food getting colder by the minute. Next bugbear of mine happened shortly after — an over-​zealous waitress came to remove plates, reaching across me as I am eating. I absolutely hate this — please just wait until the end of the meal to clear plates or if you are bringing out more food — it is so uncomfortable to be mid-​mouthful and have a stranger’s armpit in your face!
Upon finishing, we waited an waited and waited for the bill to be brought across, eventually we got up to pay and stood there for about 5 minutes while none of the service staff spoke to us, eventually just thrusting a bill at us. The manager (I think) did eventually speak to us, asking how our meal went and I was honest about the wrong food and slow service. He tried to excuse the service because of a fire they had 3 months ago! HAHA, please don’t expect me to believe it takes that long to train staff in how to take an order and basics in pleasing customers. I checked the bill we had just paid and lo and behold they had even added a 10% service charge. This also made me so angry, I don’t thing we got adequate service and there was only 2 of us! I can understand service charges for large tables but this is really a joke. I would never be back and I would never recommend this place to others.

I got violently sick last night dining at Yang Sing. I was appallingly disappointed with waitresses for not stopping me when they knew I have had enough. I think I stuffed my face silly at the delicious dim sums and yummy main courses and consequently had to vomit them all out at home. I will not return to this restaurant againuntil I recover fully, probably in a few days time. Joking apart, the food was fantastic.

dim sum: 3 stars
dinner: 2 stars, and that’s generous
DIM SUM
this place is pricey. if you think about eating here you *must* know that in advance and be ok with it. otherwise you’ll begrudgingly order $ 7USD shrimp har gaos all afternoon long. the trick is to go for their half off lunchtime dim sum. i don’t remember the details of when exactly it is, but know that it does exist at least once a week (we went on a weekday, which day exactly i don’t remember).
the dim sum itself is acceptable. it’s nothing mind-​blowing. (for perspective, i live in austin and eat dim sum in austin which is about the same as the dim sum that was at yang sing. houston dim sum we eat about as often as austin dim sum, but houston dim sum is better than austin dim sum). for those of you expecting carts, nuh uh. you order off a chinese menu. not really sure what happens for those that can’t read chinese.
DINNER
the menu’s prices insist on high expectations for their food. i’m sad to say they aren’t met. the food is bland, oily, safe, and most unsatisfyingly of all generic. you can get the same type of food (and quality) at several places within a 10 minute drive of my suburban house in austin for less than half of what they charge here. granted there’s a currency conversion that accounts for some of the perceived unmerited pricing of the items, but even compared to other chinese restaurants in manchester this place is known as being expensive.
we’ve actually had other dinners at yang sing as well, but they weren’t order off the menu dinners, they were «we’ll tell you what to cook» banquet type dinners. that food isn’t much better either. we keep coming back because unfortunately it’s a family tradition (the same reason you insist on keeping that ugly shirt you’ll never fit into again). what was appalling to me last time was one of the managers lowering his voice and mentioning that they were able to obtain foods that are on the illegal list. what he had in mind i had no idea, but it left an indelible impression.
when it eventually falls to me making decisions about where to hold our family banquets you can know it wont’ be at yang sing.

There are a few members of the Yang Sing family. All you need to know is that if you’re seeking good dim sum in the city, this is one of the places to find it. As well as this you’ve got the obligatory massive choice range, the superbly put together banquet meals and the excellent service you’d expect from such a high profile place. Yes, it does get raved about, but the hype is justified.
What’s great about Yang Sing is that the staff are happily willing to accommodate different tastes, mixes and dietary requirements. In fact they’ll nigh on tailor make a meal for you if you so wish. But definitely book, as its popularity has the place rammed… particularly at weekends. You must try and catch it during the Chinese New Year celebrations, they really do go all out. The place has an exceptional atmosphere, it’s always buzzing and busy and its quality speaks for itself even before you’ve tried the food.
Which is rather good indeed. It’s simple and special, and if you’re confused about what will suit your palate the staff are more than happy to oblige and give advice. All boxes ticked pretty much!

If you’re visiting Manchester then make sure the Yang Sing is on your itinerary. It’s extensive menu and freshly prepared food has earned it a reputation for being one of the best Chinese restaurants in Europe.
Take advantage of their Dim Sum lunches or if you’re dining in the evening splash out on a banquet. Tell the staff your likes and dislikes and they’ll tailor a meal just for you and your party.
Look out for special events such as Chinese New Year celebrations and Valentine’s Day meals. It’s always best to book as the restaurant gets busy, especially at weekends.

I’m not going to knock it as maybe my taste buds aren’t educated enough to distinguish top Chinese food from regular fare. All I will say is that you better really like your oriental dishes as the Yang Sing is pretty pricey– certainly not a post Friday night out kind of place as I’d imagine you’d want to at least remember what you ate when you find yourself severely overdrawn because of it.
The décor is resplendent– a world away from the afterthought dragon lanterns and chopsticks in plastic packets other nearby restaurants are guilty of– but the service leaves a lot to be desired and no matter how hard I try, when the music plays I hear nothing but cats fighting in a tin bin.

Personally, I don’t get the huge fuss over Yang Sing. Maybe I’m just not a big Chinese food connoisseur but I don’t find it knock your socks off amazing.
Yes, the food is tasty and yes, its a nice restaurant but the way some people rave over this place as the best thing since sliced bread is lost on me!
I guess if you’re a big fan of Chinese food, you might get more out of this place than I did

I don’t know what it the hype about Yang Sing. Some people said this is the best Chinese food in Europe. Could it be???
I like the interior of Yang Sing. The Chinese contemporary style, that can easily impressed anyone. Looks $$$$. The food served for the banquet menu is more of Chinese fusion. I tried to keep an open mind.
But it was just okay. Pan fried ostrich with lemon grass sauce. Was the only dish that I liked.
Came back here for dim sum. *Insisted by Hoi Yee* Maybe I could give myself another chance. They were some nice ones. But I wasn’t excited about it. The best in Europe? Now, that is exaggerated!!!
In UK, I think the better Chinese food is in London.

The trick with Yang Sing is not to order individual dishes from the menu, rather to order the Banquet Menu and tell the staff which bits you don’t want and which bits you can’t eat. The staff are always accommodating; even if you just simply don’t want to eat the ostrich for the fourth time, they will suggest an alternative. The best thing about the menu is that while it may be pricey, it showcases some of the best and most popular dishes — particularly the scallops — and allows you to pick and choose between each.
I have been to Yang Sing approximately 8 times now and still always experience the same delight over the food and general performance and behaviour of the staff. The staff are particularly attentive and the food is always to an extremely high standard.
Moreover, going during the day provides a new type of experience. If you go to Yang Sing during lunch time, you are able to take your pick from the Dim Sum menu which provides you with a lovely selection of little bite-​sized morsels, all of which, depending on your selection, should be delicious, and all for a very reasonable price for such quality.
To sum up, Yang Sing is one of the best Chinese restaurants I have ever been to. My father has been eating here since the 1970s when he had business in Manchester, and when he comes to visit it’s always a nice excuse to experience a ‘proper’ chinese.