Congratulations to all the Graduates.

We see new friends coming in and old friends are about to leave. Graduates now have a big decision to make in their life track. Some of them will start their career next summer while others will plan for their further study. Time flies. Three years at university transform a person from a high school student to a professional ready to serve society. We at Sweet Mandarin congratulate you on your hard earned degrees and give you our best wishes.

But before you start to fly high, please slow down and spend a quiet moment on your university campus, where you have been studying, working and making friends for three years. Give sincere thanks to every road you went through, every book you read, and every friend you made. Because once you begin to work, you will see how different it is from university life.

At university, all moments, happy or sad, have been treasures from heaven. Pack them up in your mind, and embark on a new journey. Plenty more such moments are waiting for you in the years to come. Whether these moments are good or bad, you will understand life through experiencing them.

Years later, when you are in another part of the world, the moment you think of your youth, you will realise that part of your heart is still at university and Manchester will always be your home!

To celebrate, join us at Sweet Mandarin for a graduation banquet. To book a table email Lisa@sweetmandarin.com or book here

Today, there are so many incredibly delicious brands of chocolate to indulge in but there is one that is dear to my heart and which my sweet tooth craves, and that is Ferrero Rocher.

As a kid growing up in the backstreets of Manchester, I was mesmerized by the adverts that surrounded Ferrero Rocher – the tray filled to the brim and eventually the last one was distributed around a room filled with impossibly glamorous people and an even more dazzling chandelier.

Every Christmas, Chinese takeaway owners visit neighbouring Chinese takeway owners and usually bring chocolates and oranges. Well the oranges were usually discarded to the kitchen, but the chocolates were inspected and given a shake through the wrapping paper to try to distinguish what kind they were. Most were recycled by way of gifting them to another visitor but when it came to receiving boxes of Ferrero Rocher, I ensured those boxes of chocolates never left our premises.

There is an art to eating a Ferrero Rocher. The way I have always always always insisted upon to my siblings (after all I am the oldest by 2 minutes), is to eat layer by layer but DO NOT break the wafer shell. When one has nibbled away at the chocolate encrusted nutty layer, the wafer shell should be opened and the hazelnut Nutella goo should be scooped out (with the tongue of course) and the whole hazelnut hidden inside the hazelnut Nutella goo eaten as best possible without it getting stuck in the teeth. At the very end, that is when one can pop the two wafer shells into the mouth to melt. It takes so much better than just crunching into one of these beauties. Try it and let me know the difference. You’ll thank me for the advice above and that is why Ferrero Rocher makes #970 Sweet Nothing.