First look at Dishoom Manchester - opening this winter

Manchester is set to get a taste of the old Irani cafés of Bombay, as the team behind the much-loved Dishoom restaurants finally confirm that they will be opening in the historic Manchester Hall on Bridge Street this winter.

Dishoom has picked up a number of awards since opening its first branch in Covent Garden in 2010, including 'best restaurant' at the Cateys, ‘best small group’ from The Good Food Guide, and 'best UK restaurant' from Yelp!. It also placed number 36 in The Sunday Times’ ‘best 100 companies to work for’. 

Since their launch, they have opened a further four more branches in the capital and one in Edinburgh. Manchester will become the seventh Dishoom.

Dishoom Manchester will also feature a Permit Room bar

Like their other restaurants, the Manchester Dishoom will open all day, every day, from early until late. Executive chef Naved Nasir’s breakfast menu includes their signature bacon naan roll, a Parsi power breakfast of spicy keema chicken with eggs, or the gut busting ‘Big Bombay’ breakfast. Later in the day go for their signature 'House Black Daal', Prawn Koliwada or Chole Poori.

Dishoom Manchester will also feature a Permit Room bar, serving some brand-new cocktails and a range of excellent non-alcoholic concoctions, or ‘copy tipples’, such as the sober martini or the dry old fashioned.

Manchester Hall, a former freemason’s hall, is the perfect location for Dishoom, which has been inspired by the faded elegance of Bombay's Irani cafés. At their peak in the 1960s, there were almost four hundred of them, but now fewer than thirty remain. 

With Dishoom Manchester, founders Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, and cousins Ardash and Amar Radia, say they have taken the opportunity to 'explore the unexpected links between Manchester, Bombay and Freemasonry'. Thus, they visited Bombay’s Freemasonry Hall, the Lodge Rising, which has inspired designs for the new Manchester venue.

The new restaurant and bar will be located on the ground floor of Manchester Hall, alongside Masons and the soon-to-open Honest Burgers. Fable, a pan-Asian restaurant and bar by Panacea owner Joe Akka, which was also due to open in Manchester Hall later this year, recently had the plug pulled.