Dishoom reveals Manchester opening date – with half price food during the soft launch

Eagerly-anticipated restaurant Dishoom will soon take up residence on the ground floor of Manchester Hall, a 1920s Grade II listed building originally used as a Freemasons’ Hall.

Like their restaurants in London and Edinburgh, this newest member of the Dishoom family will pay loving homage to the old Irani cafés of Bombay, and will be open every day from early until late with capacity for over 200 diners in the two restaurants and bar.

Irani cafés were once part of everyday life in Bombay. Opened early last century by Zoroastrian immigrants from Iran, there were almost four hundred of these cafés at their peak in the 1960s, breaking down barriers by bringing people together over food and drink.

The Manchester restaurant will open on Thursday 6th December, and diners will receive 50% off food at breakfast, lunch and dinner during the soft launch period, which will start on Sunday 25th November.

The breakfast menu will include Dishoom’s famous bacon naan roll and sausage naan roll.

Then there’s a Parsi power breakfast of eggs and spicy chicken keema studded with delicate morsels of chicken liver; Irani cafe staple akuri: spicy scrambled eggs, with soft home-baked bread buns; and plentiful bottomless house chai.

This will be followed by an all-day menu of small plates, grills, biryanis, salad plates, hand-made breads and sides. Don’t miss the signature house black daal, a rich lentil dish slow-cooked over 24 hours.

The Chef’s Special for the Manchester restaurant will be a decadent nalli nihari biryani. Think tender shank of lamb layered with rice and caramelised onions then sealed beneath a pastry blanket. It will be enriched with kaleji (chicken liver), raita and nihari gravy on the side.

The Permit Room bar – named after the official term for all Bombay drinking establishments, in which, according to the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949, only permit-holders may consume alcohol – will serve classic cocktails such as the East India gimlet, hoppy butter paanch and monsoon martini.

New tipples just for Manchester include Beram’s cobbler with mango, pineapple and dry manzanilla; and Chevalier’s sour, with raspberries, tamarind and Rangpur gin.

The Permit Room will also serve a range of ‘dry cocktails’, including a sober martini, dry old fashioned and virtuous tulsi Sour.

As with all Dishoom restaurants, for every meal served at Dishoom Manchester, the team will donate a school meal to a child who would otherwise go hungry. A meal for a meal.

Dishoom work with two charities – the Akshaya Patra Foundation in India and Magic Breakfast in the UK – who provide nourishing meals to children in schools.

So far, Dishoom has donated over 5 million meals and counting.

Dishoom will open on Thursday 6th December. Diners will receive 50% off food at breakfast, lunch and dinner during soft launch, which will run from 9am on Sunday 25th November until 4pm on Wednesday 5th December. Walk-ins only.

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