/FOOD AND DRINK
GOOD things come to those who wait, and Manchester’s patience has been richly rewarded with the arrival of Dishoom. Rumours of the London-based restaurant group’s move up north had been churning for over a year before owners confirmed they had signed up to open inside the newly-renovated Manchester Hall.
And the queues that have become a familiar sight outside its London restaurants followed them here too, with diners waiting for hours in the rain to get in during its opening week.
Is it worth getting drenched for? I wouldn’t know, I booked a table (you can do so up until 5.45pm, after that it’s walk-ins only). But should you have to wait - the queues have abated now we’re into January - you’ll be handed a hot chai and an umbrella until a space frees up in the bar.
The grade II listed grandeur of the former Freemason’s lodge on Bridge Street makes an impressive canvas for the concept, which pays loving homage to the old Irani cafes popular in Sixties Bombay.
To the front is a bright, airy dining space hugged by mustard yellow banquettes and carved up by wooden partitions. Up some stairs and past the bar is the grand old Derby Room, formerly used by the Freemasons as a ballroom and banqueting hall and now home to the restaurant’s striking centrepiece, a wood and glass pavilion stretching up towards the domed ceiling.
Antique ceiling fans and furniture sourced from thieves markets in Mumbai are set against restored, original parquet floors and stained glass windows - a culture clash that continues on the menu, which mixes up traditional Iranian and Indian dishes with Dishoom’s interpretation of British breakfasts like its famous bacon naan.
Prawns koliwada (£6.50), fried in a thick, batter tinted red with chilli and dunked in a sticky, sour date and tamarind chutney, are the perfect beer snack, as are the fried green chillies (£4.20). It’s just a pity there isn’t much beer to pair them with - they’ve run out of their own Dishoom IPA, our second choice of Beavertown Gamma Ray is all gone too, and so finally we settle on a couple of bottles of Wu Gang Chops the Tree, a Belgian-style witbier from London brewery Pressure Drop (£5.30).
There’s been a delivery issue, apparently. A few more Manchester breweries on the beer list might have avoided that problem - throw a dart from the doorstep and you’d probably hit one, after all.
Teething issues. There are none of those with the pau bhaji (£4.50), a fiercely spicy bowl of mashed vegetables that I’d give my last molar for and could still quite happily eat without. It’s the sort of deeply nourishing comfort food they should prescribe on the NHS. There are hot, buttered buns fresh from the oven to scoop up greedy handfuls with.
Breads are a forte, particularly the roomali roti - hand-shaped, slapped and scorched over a hot dome to order. The result is as stretchy and sheer as crepe paper, unfolding from the little loaf tin it’s served in to the size of a pillowcase. Straight in it goes to a pot of slowsimmered black daal (£6.20), cooked over 24 hours to an unctious, sticky richness.
Vegetarians will enjoy the best of Dishoom; the meat dishes we try are less memorable. Lamb chops, marinated in lime juice, jaggery, ginger and garlic and blackened on the grill, are punier than their price tag (£4.30 a pop - portions used to be bigger, our waitress confides) and a little overdone compared to the pinker, plumper ones I’ve had at the Shoreditch branch. A larger plate of more tender lamb boti kebab (£10), searing with the heat of red chilli, garlic and ginger, gives more baa for your buck.
Service is sharp and our waitress isn’t afraid to tell us we’ve overordered when we eye up the Manchester special, nalli nihari biryani (£16), which is essentially a lamb curry pie, sealed with a pastry top. As the other dishes arrive and quickly cover every square inch of our table, we reluctantly concede she’s right.
We could have lived without dessert too. An Indian twist on an Eton mess (£5.70), with saccharine sweet rose syrup and gulkand (a rose petal preserve) joining the melee of meringue, strawberries and cream isn’t worth saving room for - not with so much else worthy of your attention on the main menu. Get stuck in to the cocktail list instead - the Debonair (orange, marmalade vodka, ginger, star anise, bitters and orange cream soda, £8.50) will sate a sweet tooth nicely.
Used mainly as a holding pen until tables are ready, The Permit Room bar feels like a missed opportunity. I expect there’d be plenty of people who’d enjoy dropping in just for a drink and a bar snack. But then, they aren’t short of custom.
The bar is named after the law brought in with the Bombay Prohibition Act in 1949 (and never officially repealed) that drinkers must have a licence to buy liquor, and some of the cocktails are sold in “pegs” - the measures that alcohol would be prescribed in, in miniature glass bottles. This kind of attention to detail runs throughout the restaurant.
Would you know the tiled yellow floor is an exact replica of the floor of Mumbai’s Masonic Lodge if you didn’t read it here? Or that the portraits that hang in the back dining room are speciallycommissioned replicas of original paintings of the Indian Masons’ Grand Masters? Probably not. But it tells you something about Dishoom’s respect for the building and its heritage, and their determination to do it justice.
Running successful restaurants in London is no guarantee of making it in Manchester, as operators like Burger and Lobster have learned before scuttling back down south, tail between legs. The best, like Hawksmoor, came with humility and respect for the city and reaped the rewards. Dishoom looks set to do the same.