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It was a quiet night, in the lull between Christmas and New Year, when we arrived at East Glory. We had booked earlier in the day but, as it transpired, need not have. We were shown to a funny little quarter-circle shaped table in the room whose window looks onto the pavement. All our fellow customers were also to be found here.
Our waitress was most solicitous and her air of authority left us in no doubt that she was running the operation. She handed us a pair of curious metal backed menus and left us to peruse. The menus contained over two hundred dishes: the entire repertoire of British Cantonese cuisine was represented, from egg fried rice to crispy duck. However, the familiarity was mitigated by a dash of the interestingly exotic: Japanese teriyaki and tempura dishes and Thai tom yam, three flavours sea bass and so on were included .
The menu was confusing. Divided into sections, some by style of cooking (crispy dim sum, skewers, sizzling) some by main ingredient (ribs and wings, lobster, noodles) and some by other, arbitrary designations (chef's specialities, seafood specialities, 'choice of sauce', you pretty much had to read it sequentially from start to finish. It would be better if they could shoehorn this into a more European format of starters/mains(chicken/beef/fish)/sides. Sushi had clearly been removed from the menu - its laborious preparation and demanding freshness having failed to stimulate sufficient demand to justify its presence.
Inevitably, we ended up in deep and complex negotiation with our hostess. The first fruit of these discussions was that we'd share a dim sum platter. Our hostess rushed to pass the good news to the kitchen and returned to our table for further deliberations. Tracey decided to sample one Japanese dish, on the basis that first class Chinese and Thai gear can already be had from the Shanghai and International Thai Cuisine, respectively. She went for chicken teriyaki. I plumped for shredded chilli beef and we shared some egg fried rice. A confident and good-natured Semillon Chardonnay took our fancy on the not-quite-so-extensive wine list.
We had barely finished this enjoyable cogitation when the dim sum arrived. The fried pieces - spring roll, chicken wing, prawn parcel - were good in an unremarkable way. It was instead the steamed morsels that really took our fancy: the prawn and pork dumplings were small but delicious, the doughy wrapping in just the right ratio to the filling to avoid it becoming stodgy and bland.
Of our mains, the chicken teriyaki turned out to be the only dish that wasn't a complete success - its meat, too lean for the grill, having become somewhat dry. Accompanying grilled vegetables and the teriyaki sauce were however good. My crispy chilli beef bore a strong family resemblance to kung po chicken and the taste only confirmed this observation. It ate very nicely with the plainness of the good rice.
One doesn't visit oriental restaurants for the desserts - unless one's especially partial to banana splits - and the usual depressing laminated card put in an appearance here. We opted instead to retire to the warmth of the fireplace for coffee and a brandy. Here we spent an enjoyable few minutes in the company of the entire staff of five, discussing their Manchester origins, giant tiger prawns and such like.
A most enjoyable evening for us. The people behind East Glory are obviously enthusiastic and their ambitious kitchen and attentive service impressed us. We felt that they could do themselves a big favour by simplifying their menu though.
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