When Hello Oriental opened in Manchester it quickly became the new and funky place to visit, I have wanted to go for a while and was given the perfect opportunity to escape the house and kids and go for Sasha's birthday.
Hello Oriental is located in Circle Square close to Oxford Road, it was a 10 minute walk from St Peters Square tram stop. When you arrive it looks quite little but when you realise that it’s all underground it’s really a surprise! As you enter from street level, there is a bakery which sells traditional Chinese buns (with some really interesting flavours like purple sweet potato to Korean chicken to custard). You can get hot and cold drinks here including bubble tea and also some incredible soft serve ice cream (which I will come back to!)
On the floor below there is Rice - Paper - Pho a wonderful restaurant which we didn’t visit this time but instead headed down to the bottom floor where there is a restaurant, you sit down and scan the QR code and order from your phone.
There is so much to choose from that it took me about 15 minutes just to look through and decide! I ordered some dishes for the table and also a shimmering vimto bubble tea (my first ever bubble tea) we had salt & pepper chicken, Korean chicken loaded fries, katsu bao bun, fried rice, some edamame and a section of dim sum. There is also an option to hire games, drink cocktails and its dog friendly too!
Everything was delicious and I am now a little obsessed with bubble tea......the decor of the ground floor is relaxed and funky. There’s lots of neon including a shopping trolley (which I kinda want for my house) and the bathrooms have a cute hexagonal mirror with more neon!
After we had eaten we headed into the supermarket to see what treats there were, I bought the kids some little treats and then we headed back to the top for the bit I was the most excited about......taiyaki ice cream!! So taiyaki is a fish shaped waffle which is then filled with ice cream, they change flavours regularly and I went for a mix of lychee and black sesame which was so good. They also do a bear shaped waffle too which is filled with chocolate chips and liquid chocolate....next time for sure!
Overall, I loved Hello Oriental..... Great food, great atmosphere and totally instagrammable too! I will definitely be heading back again and would take the kids for sure they would love it.
You can check out Hello Oriental more on their Instagram here and for more on our visit check out my Instagram here