Ming Moon Men

Ming Moon has long attracted the custom of the ‘economical’ student, who in an attempt to get the most from their money, can consume unlimited amounts of Chinese food for the small setback of £12.99.

The Tab’s  infamous pairing of Will Copping and Luke Terry attempted the challenge.

Of course, this was never going to end well:

ROUND 1: Starters

Will:

I’m a conformist who finds comfort in the system, so I stayed strictly within the “starter” canteen. 3 chicken nuggets, 3 chips, two onion rings, 2 heaped tablespoons of shredded chicken and 2 little-finger sized cucumber sticks. The latter was immensely helpful, constituting two of my five-a-day and hydrating me for the challenge to come.

Dat veg tho. The Tab promotes healthy eating kids.

Luke:

Having starved myself all day I decided that the best course of action was to just pile it up as soon as I got in. The view was amazing, rows of food laid out as far as the eye could see. Beef, chicken, duck, pork – it was like I was in one of Adele’s wildest dreams! There was so much food for so little money! As I took it all in I fell to my knees and prayed to the gods of Ming Moon.

That would already be more than £8 on meal plan.

ROUND 2: Art

Will:

I decided to draw a portrait of our outgoing editor Rhian, under whose guidance I have inched closer to world domination. Rhian is proud of her red hair and rightly so! I realised my vision with my favourite, Shanghai chicken. I think the crispy red chunks perfectly portray a billowing red mane. The green beans were the spitting image of her healthy, revitalising smile. When I showed Rhian she started crying- she was obviously overwhelmed by the beauty of what I had created.

The likeness is uncanny

Luke:

I chose to attempt to portray our dear Leader Poppy Wilkinson. Unfortunately, at this stage I was still REALLY hungry from my forced starvation and mainly just grabbed what I wanted to shove in my gullet hole (DISCLAIMER: This means food, Ming Moon expressly forbids mid-meal blowjobs). This stomach led reasoning left my homage to Poppy with a tiny face, a large misshapen blob of cleavage and dead, staring eyes. I also added a sausage in her mouth. I’m not saying saying what the sausage symbolises, I’m just saying that if you want to tweet this image the hashtag is #poppycock

#poppycock

ROUND 3: Pick each others:

Will:

Luke was frankly a bit off with me since we arrived so I knew this round was going to be awkward. He even made a point of not complimenting my new jacket so I was determined to make this round hell for him. I wanted him to feel the gains of his healthy eating regime slip away before his eyes so I was liberal with the fatty pork belly. These and the indigestible boiled potatoes were all covered with wasabi as insurance. I nicked some ice cubes from the salad counter to really get his mouth screaming for mercy. Two rainbow jellies and a boiled tea-egg rounded off a truly adversarial set of textures.

He conquered Fetsoc, he’ll conquer this small ice cube.

Luke’s revenge was devastating, bad enough to douse both the mussels and the slice of chocolate cake (yes chocolate cake) in curry sauce. Luke was straying towards the salad counter with one hand hovering over the salad vinaigrette cream. I asked him what it was and he said he didn’t know, all that he did know was that it was going on my chocolate cake.

Bon appetite

Luke:

I knew this was a bad idea from the start. I also knew that if I was going to have to do this, I wasn’t going to lose. So I shoved a collection of mismatched, misplaced, random stuff that looked like something Heston Blumenthal would cook whilst on acid.

It’s not pretty to see a man beg.

What did I get in return? Ice, Wasabi sauce and raw egg.  I don’t like egg at all, unless it’s been splattered on David Cameron’s face. It took me most of the course to perfect the timing of eating the Wasabi and ice cubes so the searing sauce and the freezing ice cancelled each other out.

Other than that it was delicious.

Spot the Wasabi-clad disciples of death.

ROUND 4: Round the World in 8 Types of Chicken

Will:

So apparently Ming Moon only cooks 8 types of chicken, which I found rather underwhelming. I was secretly convinced that most other things had chicken in them including the pork (it’s covered in sauce to deceive you), the French crepes (I’m sure there was a beak sticking out of the batter) and the water (it was too good to be just water.)

I was seriously flagging at this point so I only had a couple of pieces, each arranged in an aesthetic ring with some ice cream in the middle. Trust me it made perfect sense at the time….and the ice cream probably had chicken in it too.

Bulk v Aesthetic

Luke:

Our brief rest prepared us for our biggest course yet. It turns out my stomach wasn’t all that “prepared” for another course. Trying to load them into my mouth was like shoving a grenade up the rectum of Chris Moyles: dangerous, unpleasant and potentially extremely volatile.

It was during this course that Will ate the perfect amount of poultry that he could enter a state of Chicken Nivarna.

Feeling the enlightened vibe.

ROUND 5: Desert

Will:

Well In that moment, I had the misfortune of chewing a grotesquely large grape in my mouth and crunching down on a seed, which instantly filled me with rage.

Plus I had made a real effort with the jacket and Luke still hadn’t said anything.

Despite some setbacks I managed to scoff some chocolate cake and chocolate-dipped marshmallows. The fountain wasn’t working and Luke was frankly embarrassing himself anyway so I played it cool and rounded things off with some jelly and a rice-krispy cake thing. The jelly was a bit bland despite its alluring orange colour but this was possibly due to my taste buds shutting down due to the trauma.

You thought this grape was going to be seedless? YOU WERE WRONG.

Luke:

Despite wanting to dash into the toilets and vomit like Paris Hilton, Will and I settled down to Dessert. It all tasted fine but eating it was such an effort that all flavour was more or less ruined. I struggled through a cake and then I was done. It was unclear as to who had won, me or Ming Moon, but I take pride in knowing that I beat Will. Not that it was a competition.

That’s just not right man.

Having both survived the ordeal, we would definitely recommend Ming Moon for its value for money. Just avoid the wasabi!

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