{"id":1581,"date":"2020-11-02T16:39:13","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T16:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eatmcr.co.uk\/?p=1581"},"modified":"2020-11-16T17:07:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T17:07:52","slug":"rusholmes-revolution-beyond-the-curry-mile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eatmcr.co.uk\/culture\/rusholmes-revolution-beyond-the-curry-mile\/","title":{"rendered":"Rusholme’s Revolution Beyond The Curry Mile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is the authentic kind of peasant food and these places are where you find all the best shit. Without cheap rent and immigration you\u2019re not going to get that melting pot where loads of new food comes through. This is where all the real shit happens.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The real shit is, without question, the best shit. And it\u2019s happening on an unassuming terraced side street just off Wilmslow Road. Huddled over a tightly packed table, brimming with glorious, sumac dusted, wood grilled lamb and eye wateringly fluffy, crisp naan fresh from the tandoor, Luke Cowdrey aka Luke Unabomber – one half of DJ duo The Unabombers, WorldWideFM DJ, Homoelectric & Homobloc promoter, instagram lunatic, restauranteur, raconteur and kebab connoisseur is passionately delivering a history lesson on the evolution of Rusholme\u2019s unsurpassed grilled meat in naan scene, from the watershed opening of Rusholme Chippy in \u201977 to the Kurdish alchemy of the present day, with nods to \u201870s New York, \u201880s Sheffield and The Ottoman Empire along the way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As naan is effortlessly torn then enveloped around the delicate outer crunch of Kurdish lamb kebab and decorated with fresh parsley and chopped onions, Luke\u2019s enthusiasm, despite now being on our third meal in little over two hours, is refusing to wane. And when the taste of Kurdistan Cafe\u2019s offerings passes your lips, it\u2019s not hard to see why. This is next level gear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Kurdish food, you have such an incredible combination of flavours,\u201d<\/em> begins Luke, constructing another hand sized pocket of perfection from the various plates in front of us. \u201cThe acidity of the sumac, the pickles, the parsley, hummus, tomatoes and the most amazing kebabs. I don\u2019t think anyone touches these. Nico here is an absolute alchemist in all of this and when this place is on form, no one touches them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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But how did we get here? How did the bright lights and baltis of the Curry Mile evolve into a haven for mind bending Middle Eastern peasant food?<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re gonna do right here is go back, way back\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

We begin by meeting Luke outside the iconic red and yellow awning of Rusholme Chippy. A million memories of shot soaking 4am meals forever nestled within its walls, the place so many of us have promised to make good on that 9am lecture only to safely miss it by a solid five hours. Established in 1977, the self proclaimed \u2018Kings of Kobeda\u2019 were smouldering skewers of Persian lamb over charcoal and slapping homemade naan against the walls of their clay tandoor when The Curry Mile was still dominated by sit down Indian and Pakistani restaurants.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The same recipes and techniques have been passed down from chef-to-chef over the intervening four decades, solidifying the misleadingly christened Chippy as an irreplaceable Manchester icon. It is not only a stalwart of the scene but, as Luke relays to us, a trendsetter more than 40 years ahead of it\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

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\u201cRusholme Chippy was a really early beginning of the clay oven and the tandoor. Two Persian brothers, in 1977, set it up. It\u2019s name is deceptive. You can get chips, but they were the early adopters of what is now ubiquitous in Rusholme and a lot of Northern towns, where you have this Persian, Kurdish alchemy of kobeda and tandoor bread.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1977 they had the first clay oven outside of London in the whole of the UK. They were so ahead of their time, no one really realised what we had because there weren\u2019t any others. It didn\u2019t really develop into anything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAlongside (fellow Wilmslow Rd veterans) Camel One and Abdul\u2019s, this was where I discovered the Persian version of what became what you see now. The breads were bigger, they were more of an oval shape. Then you\u2019ve got kobeda, which are the long lamb skewers.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t ask me how I know this, but kobeda are actually derived from the Persian swords from medieval times which they put into fires on their many escapades with the Ottoman Empire and they created a kebab in the fire. That was then taken off the skewer and put onto the bread which had been cooked in tandoor ovens.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Seriously, fuck learning lopsided revisionist retellings of dusty old monarchs in GCSE history, get the creation of different kebab cultures on the national syllabus and get it on there now.<\/p>\n

Pit Stop #1: Street Corner Shawarma<\/b><\/p>\n

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Our first food stop comes just over the road at Al Zain, a Kurdish owned shawarma joint serving up what Luke assures us, alongside the fellow Kurd operated Manchester Fresh Shawarma, is the best vertical Lebanese lamb in town<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not wrong.<\/p>\n

The two shawarma spits (one lamb, one chicken) twirl mesmerically like ballerinas in front of you upon entrance, the much fuller chicken version a clear second best to the ludicrously popular lamb variety, crowned with tomatoes and onion, which permeate through knee tremblingly tender meat. We leave Luke to do the honours when it comes to ordering up a plethora of kebabs, all wrapped in a traditional flatbread that delivers the perfect amount of chew as we proceed to tear through our street corner starters to a cacophony of \u2018fucking hell\u2019s. The meat just glides apart, mixing effortlessly well with the bread and accompanying pickles and salad, all luminous oranges, purples and greens. The mule kick of chilli providing a welcome wake-me-up on a typically drizzly Mancunian Thursday lunchtime.<\/p>\n

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Sauce ridden smiles confirm that Luke\u2019s almost 40 years of experience in the kebab devouring game have generated peerless instincts when it comes to identifying world class shawarma. Shout out to Lebanon too, because between this magic and their settlers in Mexico helping introduce the world to Tacos Al Pastor in the 1930\u2019s, they have given us all two wonderful culinary gifts.<\/p>\n

From Eighties Elephant Legs To Post-Acid House Hangouts<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cBetween 1985 and 2000, Pakistani and Indian versions of a kebab, which was naan bread, generally and chicken tikka arguably overtook the doner as the Holy Grail,\u201d<\/em> explains Luke.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me most people\u2019s understanding of a kebab goes back to a really bad doner, an elephant leg on a skewer with pita bread and in a way it was. It\u2019s what people had when they were pissed. Most Northern towns had doner kebabs that weren\u2019t very good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cA mixture of immigration and different cultures coming here opened up the whole kebab scene to more influences, so for me the defining moment was definitely Abdul\u2019s, the Tandoori Kitchen and Camel One, which was the first wave of the Pakistani\/Indian naan bread and chicken tikka and that became the standard.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cTandoori Kitchen were actually Iranian and doing their oddball alchemy with it where they had this amazing Persian bread with incredible chicken tikka, which was the holy grail for me. But Camel One and Abdul\u2019s were the defining places in the mid \u201880s and \u201890s. Post acid house that\u2019s where everyone went. Camel One was the coolest hangout. All the young Asian lads and Moss Side lads came up, students came down.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Camel One, with it\u2019s unmistakable red and white candystriped shopfront catching the eye of anyone within at least 100 yards has, like the aforementioned Rusholme Chippy, stood the test of time, even if The Curry Mile didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Curry Mile\u2019 moniker for Wilmslow Road was established in the 1980\u2019s, although textile mill workers from the Indian subcontinent had been frequenting cafes in this corridor a couple of miles south of the city centre since the \u201850s. Gradually, over the next 20 years or so, the largely Pakistani community began to expand the number of restaurants along the stretch until, in the late \u201870s it was synonymous with South Asian curries.<\/p>\n

It is no longer a name Luke feels is suitable for the area, though, given the closures of many of the original establishments and the evolution of immigration into the neighbourhood. It also could have been the blessing in disguise that saw Rusholme level up into the most exciting culinary enclave in Greater Manchester.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Curry Mile died on it\u2019s arse because it changed. With the exception of Mughli, which is wonderful, a lot of the curry houses shut down and the white middle classes stopped coming to Rusholme, but that\u2019s when the magic happened, because the next wave of immigration was Kurdish, Turkish, Afghani, Syrian, all the various elements of the Middle East.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cSo the food in Rusholme, almost by osmosis slowly began to change and on the side streets you got places like Kurdistan Cafe, because of cheap rent and empty properties, which meant that new school immigrants, new arrivals, came in and could rent places for fuck all. The food was for them, it wasn\u2019t for us, it wasn\u2019t for tourists. It\u2019s why this is still so cheap, it was like a return to the 60s, 70s and 80s when the Indians, Pakistanis and Bengalis on the Curry Mile would cook home curries for their people because they were working in mills, in textiles and the rag trade and those places were where they ate.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I arrived in Manchester it was still quite underground, places like Shazan and a few others didn\u2019t serve alcohol, didn\u2019t have cutlery, so it\u2019s almost returned to that period where now instead of Indian, Pakistani and Bengali it\u2019s Kurdish, Afghani and Syrian. So this is the next wave and this all happened under the nose of everyone. No one noticed it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This modern influence from the Middle East is undeniable. Wherever you look on Wilmslow Road and it\u2019s numerous offshoots, there are menus displaying prices for kobeda, fatayer and qabuli pulao. Backstreet Kurdish bakers are slinging flatbreads four-for-a-pound while Iraqi shawarma houses sandwich their fillings on fresh Samoon bread. The aforementioned white middle classes no longer being prominent in the area has leant itself to an underground vibrancy being developed that is completely alien to anything you could ever wish to experience in the centre of town. It feels vital and enriching. Affordable, authentic street food at every turn without the merest hint of the words \u2018artisan\u2019 or \u2018market\u2019? Yes fucking please.<\/p>\n

Pit Stop #2: Double Kobeda With a Side of Rubicon and Noughties Spanish Football<\/b><\/p>\n

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Our second stop sees us venture inside Al Jazeera, back across the road from Al Zain. Luke doubles down on the kobeda, while advising us to try the qabuli pulao, the national dish of Afghanistan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From about four seconds after the food hits the table, it\u2019s not difficult to figure out why the Afghanis flocked to this dish of\u00a0 <\/span>delicate lamb (or beef) blanketed in a bed of steamed basmati rice, carrots and raisins cooked in a mouth watering broth. It disappears from sight in a matter of minutes, even with a Leviathan sized double kobeda sitting alongside it, crying out to be devoured.<\/p>\n