Dishoom Manchester
Ian Jones, Food and Drink Editor
Ah, Dishoom. Probably the most famous Indian restaurant in all the land – and rightly so, if these new dishes are anything to go by. They’re the result of a research trip to Mumbai at the start of the year, followed by months of fine-tuning and tweaking by Dishoom’s first-class kitchen boffins.
One thing that doesn’t need a shake-up is the restaurant. This Grade II listed Bridge Street venue is a beautiful, bustling space, staffed with wonderfully cheerful and fearsomely well-informed front-of-house. Dishoom regularly wins awards for being a great place to work, and it comes across many times over – happy workplace, happy dining experience.
The first dish we try is the updated version of keema pau, a longstanding Dishoom classic inspired by Mumbai’s Irani cafes. Put simply, mince and toast has no right to be this good. The textured lamb meat is full of deeply satisfying flavours, ranging from the robust aromatics of the lindi pepper, to subtle, delicate hints of dill. The bread is sliced thick, toasted until golden and smothered with butter, and together the two make magic.
Originating from Amritsar in the Majha region of Punjab, the fish Amritsari is a more gentle dish. Thick chunks of fresh white fish covered with in a lightly spiced batter, they’ll make your tastebuds tingle when dipped into the accompanying green chutney.
The cutely-named fancy house salad is another well-recommended light-but-sturdy option. The taste bounces from sweet to tart and back again, thanks to that snazzy Goan coconut toddy vinegar dressing, but it’s the creative combination of ingredients – fresh leaves, broken wheat, fruits, pickled beetroot and caramelised cashews – that makes the dish sing. A solid addition to any meal.
Probably the most mouthwatering new main is the Goan monkfish curry. This multi-layered sauce could be one of the best on the entire Dishoom menu, even outmatching the legendary butter chicken sauce, which we’ve been raving about for years, here at CT HQ.
It’s creamy without being heavy, thanks to the coconut, mixed with an inspired blend of tamarind, tomatoes and the wonderfully named kokum (no, not a Pokémon, but rather an Indian fruit related to the mangosteen). It’s sour, fruity and velvety, all in a single mouthful, and an ideal match for this high-grade chunky fish.
The most mind-blowing dish on the menu has to be the biryani. I’m generally indifferent to biryanis, having tried various unmemorable all-in-one portions over the years. Dishoom’s nalli nihari biryani is very much not that. Nihai is widely used as a celebratory dish, and the Dishoom version – currently only available here and in the Covent Garden branch – is a riot of fun and flavour.
Far from being a thrown-together bowl of odds and ends, here a tender shank of lamb, slow-cooked for many hours, is layered with rice and caramelised onions and then sealed beneath a pastry blanket – with the bone sticking out at one end. The fun comes with carefully slicing the buttery, flakey pastry lid off, dramatically peeling back to reveal piping hot lamb and rice, then pouring thick, meaty, spicy sauce into the lot from a silver gravy boat. Now that’s how to do a biryani.
Want more? There’s a chicken liver raita on the side too, to add yet more levels of flavour and texture to an already out-there dish. Does it need it? Hell no, but this is an all-guns-blazing jamboree of a dish – the more the merrier.
The new desserts maintain this level of razzle-dazzle. The orange caramel custard is an updated twist on the dessert served at Mumbai’s 100-year-old Britannia & Company restaurant, coming with a very British slice of Terry’s Chocolate Orange (a treat also created almost 100 years ago). It has a supremely satisfying wobble and provides a pleasingly light contrast to the savoury dishes.
The coconutty fruit crumble has another old-school dessert feel, bringing together a trio of bright fruits – pineapple, apple and raspberry – topped with a crunchy crumble, which in turn is topped with a silky smooth sphere of coconut ice cream.
Dishoom is one of those rare restaurants that deserves all the hype and more. Every element is the best it can be, but best of all, the team doesn’t sit still – they’re constantly sourcing new ideas, and finessing and enhancing existing dishes, leading to wonderful menu updates like this.
