The Times
Jay Rayner visited a vast “steel-blue glass cathedral” that “squats… like some cartoon version of an alien spaceship” beside the M60 in Greater Manchester. Following a reputed £15million refurb, the former HQ of the Co-operative Bank is now an Indian restaurant with three banqueting suites accommodating 1,250 people plus a 400-seater restaurant (“And it’s full”).
The self-service restaurant, which charges £29.99 a head, is so good it forces Jay to rethink his prejudice against buffets. “The aesthetic is classy cruise ship” and a buffet counter “so long you could run time trials down it” offers more than 100 different dishes to a mainly British Asian crowd: the warming lights are not kind to poppadoms, but the fried items – chicken wings and samosas – turn over so fast they don’t have a chance to go soggy, while the “startling array of curries actually benefit from sitting on a gentle simmer”.
The standard kormas and tikka masalas are here, but Jay was most impressed by less obvious dishes: lamb praya, slow-cooked trotters served in a soup-like broth, and haleem, “an extraordinary concoction of lamb in lentils… cooked down for so long that it has turned into a paste-like soup.”
Jay Rayner - 2025-06-08
