Fancy Fusion Restaurant in City Centre – Grand Pacific

Impressive venue but with bland dishes, it could be better!

Grand Pacific is located in the centre of Manchester which is close to the Arndale and Brown Restaurant. As you can see the signature sign of a pineapple is presented outside the restaurant and S finds it quite cute. S found this place on the January deal list and thought she could give it a try!

If you like taking lots of photos in a beautiful restaurant, you definitely need to come here! First after walking upstairs to the restaurant, you will be amazed by the bird cage chandelier. After that, you’ll be surprised with the high ceiling with fancy decor once you enter the bar area. The dining area is behind the bar area which the seating is quite comfortable.

There are different menus for different occasions. As you can see from the menu, every dish is mixed with both western and asian elements, and this kind of new combination is always exciting.The starters S tried were King Prawn Cocktail (£7.95), Duck Gyoza (£6.25) and the mains dishes were Large Chirashi Sushi Bowl (£12.95) and Beef Tsukemen (£14.95).

The most enjoyable dish that S had there was the king prawn cocktail with kimchi Marie rose sauce. S couldn’t really taste the flavour of kimchi in it, and the bread was also a bit stiff. However, S still quite liked this dish and the way it was presented was also a plus.

Duck gyoza was surprisingly good since S didn’t expect much from it. Again, even the menu said that there were sweet potatoes, miso and hoi sin in this dish, S still had trouble to taste those flavour in it. Yet, S really liked how crispy and crunchy this gyoza was, and was not soggy and oily at all!

The mains were not as great as starters which was a shame. The beef tsukemen was a bit bland without any special taste. The beef was cooked great with pink in the middle and the texture was chewy rather than tender. The mushroom dashi did not what S expected it to taste like, but overall this dish was not so bad besides a bit tasteless.

As a sushi lover, S would definitely not recommend this dish. It did look good on the photo, but the taste was really not as good. Firstly, all the sashimi was really slim cut for both salmon and tuna, and S could barely taste any flavour of the fish. Moreover, the sushi rice was just too hard and it just reminded S of the sushi she got from Tesco which was not a good thing.

In conclusion, S was amazed by the decor and the atmosphere of the place, yet the food was probably not their strong points, especially for full price without any deal. However, S would probably visit again but just for the bar and the nice vibe.

Restaurant info:
Address: 50 Spring Gardens, Manchester M2 1EN
Phone: 0161 839 9365
Opening hours: Sun.-Thur. 12pm-12am/Fri.-Sat. 12pm-2am
Site: http://grandpacific.uk.com