'Everyone's talking about this south Manchester restaurant, but when I went the service was all over the place'

Everyone has a bad night every now and then. The Gaijin Dumpling House had one the other night, it’s just a shame that when restaurants have one, it’s with a room full of people who want feeding. Hungry can turn to hangry pretty quick, a pressure that is rather unique to the hospitality business, and an unenviable one at that.

This new-ish place on the strip in Levenshulme opened last Christmas, and has been getting chatted about plenty for its fresh dumplings and a dish called Lamb on Crack - slow, six-hour-braised lamb ribs, rubbed to within an inch of their lives with spice and then served on top of french fries. What more is there in life than that?

When we arrive, we’re told that it’s off the menu. I’m pretty gutted, to be honest, but try to be a grown up about it, which is difficult at the best of times. Sadly, that wasn’t the only thing to go a bit wrong, and while picking holes in a small business trying to make a go of it isn’t any fun at all - it’s awful - things need a bit of work here.

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I’ll get it all out of the way as quickly as I can. We had to wait more than half an hour for our table, despite having booked, and then had a seriously long wait for any food to arrive. As did everyone else in the place, the sense of gathering tension becoming pretty palpable. Basically, we found the limit to the amount of time you can play ‘guess which celebrity I’m thinking of’ with two