Popular Manchester food scene staple, Platt Fields Market Garden fermentation champion, former Where The Light Gets In chef and Things Palace pop-up and supper club master Lorcán Kan is returning to his native Australia at the end of the month.

The good news is there’s still at least one more chance to eat his food. This time, Lorcán is getting his squid (ok, octopus) game on in pizza form.

The pizza is all about Korean pizza where they do hotdogs and American cheese and I’ve always found that really fascinating

Things Palace was founded in 2019 as a vehicle to experiment with pan-Asian inspired food with an emphasis on sustainability. It will be treating Manchester to one last tasty hurrah with this special pizza collaboration.

The pop-up, which runs at Mackie Mayor from Tuesday 19 until Sunday 24 October will see Things Palace join forces with Honest Crust for a special South Korean-inspired hotdog and kimchi pizza.

Chef Lorcan Kan At The Things Palace X Sadlers Yard Summer Jam In Manchester By Fiona Finchett — **Chef Lorcán Kan at the Things Palace x Sadlers Yard Jam earlier in the summer** Fiona Finchett

“Normally [with Things Palace] there are two types of dinners. One where it’s for 24 people, you sit down and it’s multiple courses. The other type is like what I do at Platt Fields or this pizza one where I try to feed everyone on one plate of food with a good amount that’s not super expensive.” Lorcán says.

“I always wanted to have an accessible one where everyone’s able to come and also have a more expensive one where I’m able to play more with food. This one is more like the former, one plate of food that you can buy, eat the whole thing and you’ll be full and satisfied.”

The Things Palace X Honest Crust Pizza Will Feature Homemade Kielbasa Sausage Kimchi And Crispy Seaweed And Is Availabe At Mackie Mayor In Manchester Credit Andy Hatton — **The pizza will be topped with homemade sausage, kimchi and crispy seaweed** Andy Hatton

A sausage octopus is definitely a thing

The pizza in question is not just any pizza. The final Things Palace and Honest Crust version will involve Kielbasa-style sausage made by Lorcán himself with shoulder pork from Manchester’s Littlewood Butchers, smoked in the Platt Fields Market Garden smoker.

Lorcán's own kimchi made in a traditional Tongbaechu style and crispy kale "seaweed", also from Platt Fields Market Garden, will complete the pizza.

The Honest Crust gang will be keeping their end of the bargain too with their classic tomato sauce made from the finest Italian tomatoes (sourced from a small supplier in Basilicata, Italy), mozzarella from Latticini Orchidea in Campania and their trademark naturally leavened sourdough base made with a blend of flours from Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire and fermented for a minimum of 48 hours.

At the centre of each pizza will be the aforementioned sausage cut into the shape of an octopus.

“Honest Crust is amazing and Rich, who runs it, is one of the nicest people I’ve met during my time in Manchester. When I first met Rich I started talking to him about hotdogs and then I started talking to him about if you cut them in a certain way they look like an octopus. So then he asked me if I wanted to make a pizza about it.” Lorcán says.

A Compostable Tray Of Char Siu Pork With Jasmine Rice Congee And Pickled Home Grown Vegetables Cooked At Platt Fields Market Garden Fallowfied Manchester — **A Things Palace tray of char siu pork at Platt Fields Market Garden**

Korean inspired pizza is definitely a thing

Inspiration for Honest Crust collab has come from far and wide. The sausage Lorcán has made is a throwback to lockdown and his work on Where The Light Gets In project, The Sausage Factory, where the Stockport restaurant made deli-style items with cooked sausages preferred to charcuterie due to their longer shelf life. Read about WTLGI's other lockdown project The Pickle Factory here.

The kimchi, meanwhile, channels Lorcán’s fermentation work whilst living in Manchester and the crispy seaweed is a nod to one of his first British food experiences.

“Crispy seaweed is something I never knew about until I moved to Manchester and I had a takeaway Chinese. That was my introduction to British Chinese takeaway and then I found out it was just kale with MSG, sugar and salt.” Lorcán says.

The Ingredients For Things Palace X Honest Crust For Their Week Long Korean Pizza Residency At Mackie Mayor In Manchester — **The deconstructed version of the pizza AKA finest ingredients** Andy Hatton

The pizza is also a nod to Korean sausage ppang, an American-inspired, cheese-laden sausage bread eaten in Korea.

"The pizza is all about Korean pizza where they do hotdogs and American cheese and I’ve always found that really fascinating." says Lorcán, "It’s Korean people doing an American-style pizza which is an Italian dish. I’m an Australian Malay-Irish person doing Korean pizza in Manchester which is an inspiration from America but also Italian."

The pizzas will be available all day during Mackie Mayor opening hours for £14 and availability is subject to stocks lasting.

Things Palace x Honest Crust at Mackie Mayor runs from 19 - 24 October.

Cover photo by Andy Hatton

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We asked Lorcán Kan some things he liked whilst living in Manchester:

Frozen pizza

“I never had a frozen pizza before I moved to Manchester. Dr Oetker Ristorante - awesome. I wasn’t like, I’m not having one because I’m better than them, it just wasn’t a thing growing up. We had a really shit oven in our flat in Manchester and we asked our landlord for a new oven specifically for frozen pizzas. The range of frozen Ristorante pizzas is immense.”

Paratha Hut, Levenshulme

“My favourite restaurant, which my girlfriend Kelly told me not to say, is a place called Paratha Hut in Levenshulme. It’s in the back of a carwash, a tiny spot. It’s awesome. My favourite places are places like that. It’s a very functional restaurant designed to feed people. They’re serving the maximum amount of people they can which I think is a really nice thing, it’s not exclusive. It’s for the people. It’s cheap and it’s really good.”

Fishfinger sandwiches

“I don’t think I have a good sense of taste. I think my food is more textural and a physical experience. So a too-soft white piece of bread with butter and then two very crispy fish fingers with a soft interior is a textural masterpiece. There’s the butter that’s soaking into the bread. It’s amazing. It’s like the hotdog pizza, it’s dumb but if you believe in food enough you can understand its function.”

Salt and pepper chips

“I always wanted to do a salt and pepper chips tour to find out where the best ones are. In Melbourne where I’m from, a lot of fish and chip shops are Greek-run, unlike here where they’re Chinese-run, so they have a souvlaki machine instead of a wok. Whereas here you’ve got a wok and a deep fryer. The idea that someone’s just deep-fried some chips and then looked at the wok and thought, 'I’m going to stir-fry them.' Genius.”

Timothy Taylor’s Landlord Pale Ale

“Timothy Taylor Landlord is the greatest beer of all time. My first week here I went for a pint with my girlfriend’s dad at Sinclair’s Oyster Bar and I said I liked lager, because I’m from Australia, and he said you have to have this. Best beer in the world.”

Soy Sauce made from bread crusts

“I think my favourite thing I made in Manchester was soy sauce out of bread crusts at Where The Light Gets In. That was good because at the restaurant we had loads of certain waste products and we needed to turn them into something. Eventually, we used [bread crusts] to replace heavily roasted whole wheat which is what gives it the dark colour. Bread crusts are already really roasted so we used them to make a soy sauce made from split peas and that was really successful. A great product that solved a lot of problems and saved having to import from Japan. It was also really delicious.”