Maida Grill House, Salford: “We serve comprehensive care and nutrition” – Restaurant review | Food

Maida Grill House, 38 Liverpool Street, Salford M5 4LT (0161 312 9772, maidagrillhousesalford.co.uk). Starters £2–£8; ​​all other dishes £5–£8.50; unlicensed.

Even in this age of rapid digital proliferation, Britain still has its own regional specialities. I’d call them delicacies, but they rarely are. Middlesbrough’s parmo, that deep-fried cutlet the size of a pizza box topped with béchamel and cheese, is delicious in many ways. Delicacy is not one of them. It’s the perfect end to a busy Friday night; a welcome explosion of carbs, fat and protein. Bacon, made from the pig’s inner fat, is big business in a few square miles of the Black Country and all but unsellable elsewhere. Neath Market has its gravy-smeared meat sausages, a tribute to eating from nose to tail long before that existed, and Wigan has its special pies.

And then there’s the classy ‘three-portion rice’. If you know this, it’s because you’re from Greater Manchester, or have lived there for a while, and are probably on a budget. It’s very common there, and characterises the migration patterns from Pakistan to the city and the workers’ need for reliable food options. Just as the Balti houses in Birmingham’s Sparkbrook began as canteens for single men from the Indian subcontinent who needed a reliable taste of home even when they were far from its amenities, Manchester’s ‘three-portion rice’ curry houses have always been about utility, not eating out. You need to fill yourself up. Here you get a plate of steaming rice, piled high with three curries of your choice, for much less than a tenner.

What is most impressive is their staying power. Manchester is invigoratingly addicted to change. There is a constant stream of new apartment blocks and sharp-edged office buildings, some loved, some hated. Blocky red-brick streets are leaving their industrial past behind for a service-sector future of small bistros and great natural wine lists, alongside shops serving stacked smash burgers or blistered sourdough pizzas. And despite all this, the curry restaurants that serve rice and three portions have held on – an innovation supposedly invented by the This & That cafe in the Northern Quarter some 40 years ago. Admittedly, they are no longer based in this part of the city that was once home to the Pakistani rag trade, but some are still there. They have followed the factory, out to places like Cheetham Hill and Salford.

If I sound so knowledgeable now, it’s because I’m copying my mate’s homework. Thom Hetherington has worked in and around Manchester’s food and drink scene for years. If you’re a journalist and want to know what’s going on there, ask Thom. Lots of us do. Among other things, he writes a monthly column for the always-exciting website Manchester’s Finest. One of his recent columns was about the culture of the Rice and Three. I asked him to be my guide and he showed me the Maida Grill House, which underlines its enduring popularity, given that it only opened two years ago. Rice and Three places don’t employ PR people. They don’t do marketing. They just open. The square building stands alone at one end of a barren-looking strip of Liverpool Street in Salford. For all its apparent isolation, it’s a clever location. Across the road is a large Holiday Inn, which is always full of weary travellers looking for something to eat that isn’t a badly made Caesar salad. On one side is a cluster of newly built apartment blocks where countless Just Eat accounts are just a tap away. On the other side is a huge industrial estate that serves some of the company’s traditional Asian clientele.

The grill is named after Maida Kosar, who can be found both at the glass counter and in the kitchen alongside her husband Hussein. The dining room is a square, functional white space with a fridge full of soft drinks, including the famous Mango Rubicon. There is a table with water jugs, glasses and squeeze bottles of mango chutney, sweet chilli sauce and the like, serving the few seats in the dining room. The takeaway brochure, which lists the daily changing dishes, is also the main menu. It has to be said that Maida is both good and cheap, and great because it is cheap. At the end of a lunch for two, after which I will later decline dinner, I settle a bill of £32.50 and decline a tip because “this is not that kind of place”. As Thom says, “You could spend that on two at Pret.”

A portion of tarka dal is £5 on Mondays. Keema potatoes on Wednesdays are £6.50. The lamb biryani on Fridays is £8.50. Some of these dishes might also end up on the white board at the counter that Maida is finishing up at lunchtime, as the dal is only just finished. Order at the counter and they will deliver. We have four smoked lamb chops for £6.50, the meat thinly sliced ​​so it falls easily off the bone, the crispy fat black where the chilli-ripened marinade has been seared. Chicken tikka are thick pieces of brisket, grilled, coloured turmeric yellow and bursting with spices. Today there is a lamb karahi, cooked on the bone so that as you spoon the thick, onion-sweet gravy, glistening with the most aromatic of fats, you occasionally find a hard cylinder from which to suck marrow jewels. We mop up the soft, spiced potatoes with torn pieces of hot, bubbling bread smeared with clarified butter and the occasional chunk of the flaky vegetable samosas (£1 each). For extra spice, a metal tin of freshly chopped ginger and green chilli sits on the table.

And now for our heaping three-portion rice, chosen from the white board. In the west, the keema curry with peas, the lamb mince is as sweet as the karahi. In the north, there’s a big spoonful of chicken masala in a thick tomato sauce. And finally, in the east, there’s the dark yellow tarka dal. It’s a plate of care and nourishment. Like at Somali restaurant Hooyos a few weeks ago, it feels very much like the domestic has been relegated to a public space. For that, they charge £8.50, which is about the going rate for three-portion rice these days. Of course, cheap isn’t everything, but in these days of ever-increasing costs, sometimes it really is something. After all that, you might want dessert. In one corner of the cupboard is a stack of Snickers and Mars bars. I love fridge-cold chocolate from the sweets counter, but honestly, the three-portion rice did me in. And it will do you in too.

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Cardiff chefs Tommy Heaney of the eponymous Heaneys and Dave Killick, formerly head chef of The Heathcock (which was positively reviewed in this column in 2022), are joining forces to launch a new venture. The restaurant, which is yet to be named, will be opposite Heaneys and will feature a menu of game, charcuterie and handmade pasta. “I’d love to tell you this was a well-thought-out dream of ours,” Heaney told restaurantonline.co.uk. “But in reality we had a drink, one thing led to another and here we are.” They plan to open towards the end of September.

The Michelin-starred Whatley Manor has added an à la carte option alongside its £175-per-person tasting menu, but the £120 fixed price for three courses remains. Several restaurants have recently added an option to complement the rigid tasting menu, including Pompadour in Edinburgh and Furna in Brighton (whatleymanor.com).

It’s not so much the end of a restaurant as the extinguishing of the flame in Hackney, where restaurant owners James Ramsden and Sam Herlihy have announced they are closing Pidgin after nine years. The restaurant, which for a time held a Michelin star, became known for its weekly changing tasting menus. As a result, they served over 1,000 different dishes. The space will relaunch next month as a wine bar called Sesta under current Pidgin head chef Drew Snaith, in partnership with current managing director Hannah Kowalski. Follow @sesta.dining on Instagram for more.

Jay Rayner’s cookbook Nights Out at Home: Recipes and Stories from 25 Years as a Restaurant Critic (Penguin, £22) is available from guardiabookshop.com for £19.80.

Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on X @jayrayner1