Pacifica Cantonese

Pacifica Cantonese in Eccles is an old-school Chinese restaurant with lurid neon signage. It’s not trying to be slavishly authentic but it is fun: a real crowd-pleaser of a place with sticky sweet sauces, crispy duck and pancakes and all the other trappings of a popular Chinese restaurant.

Expect a good selection of dim sum – har gau, siu mai, char siu bao and the like as well as soups, ribs, prawn toasts, platters and all sorts of ways to start off your meal.

Main courses are experimental but not in a currently cool regional specifics way, more an Asian fusion coming-together with dishes like the signature fillet steak, flavoured with ginger and aniseed. The typical Chinese dishes are very much East meets West too with chicken in a hot and spicy Sichuan sauce being full of flavour but more Swinton than Sichuan on the mouth-numbing heat scale. So what? Everything is toned down to keep the punters happy and they’re happy. You would be too with chilli salt squid (like a gently Chinese calamari) followed by char siu pork in an addictively gloopily fruity Cantonese sauce.

Pacifica Cantonese has a decent selection of vegetarian food too and a good value early evening special as well as a Sunday family special along all you can eat lines.

There’s a function room upstairs with an outdoor terrace – think of it as the party zone. Downstairs it’s usually quite the party too, packed to the rafters with couples, families, groups, birthday celebrations and hen dos. This is restaurant happy food, there’s nothing to take you out of your comfort zone, no trotter spring rolls or satay duck tongues, just all the dishes you really love, not the ones you pretend to like to your foodie mates.