“Is it your first time, dear?” is the question that most get as they approach the counter at Mama Flo’s.
Florence Coke, the diminutive cook at this gem on the A6 (let’s face facts, it doesn’t have too many), is clearly keen to keep tabs on how business is going at all times.
Now 67, she quit working at the fragrance counters at Selfridge's to cook, first at a shop in Gorton and now at 314 Buxton Road, where the smell of barbecue chicken hits you long before you arrive at the door, which is adorned with a giant red bow like a birthday present.
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On a grey Wednesday lunchtime, Mama Flo is flying solo. She’s cooking, she’s serving, she’s prepping takeaways for delivery riders.
But still, the banter flows like the pineapple soda, and laughter rings out. Everyone, first timer or regular, is treated like family.
On a shelf, there are the dozens of the accolades she’s received, all proudly mounted in frames.
The special recognition award she got from the High Sheriff of Greater Manchester for the ‘outstanding activity and contribution to the community’.
There’s a thank you letter from the NHS. She gave out free meals to hospital staff and ambulance drivers during the pandemic.
There’s also a warning sign that someone is handing out snide fivers.
On the day I ate, I arrived at 12.30pm (having turned up at 7.30pm the previous night, only to find that the closing time listed on Google - 9pm - is wrong, so be warned, it closes at 7pm, prompt).
“Your first time, dear?” Flo asks.
It is, I tell her, and ask what’s good. Turns out it’s all good.
Like Kyle Walker, I order the curry goat, with rice and peas, along with two dumplings and a saltfish fritter, because I’m greedy. She insists I have the steamed vegetables to go with it. Maybe she thinks I look a bit peaky.
But as the customers slowly begin to stream in, everyone gets asked if they want steamed vegetables too. “You’re like these footballers who come in, and none of them want any vegetables,” she grumbles.
It’s not just footballers. Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown is a regular. So is former MP Edwina Currie. There’s a signed picture of local lad Will Mellor in the back too.
Once everything arrives - moments after I ordered, despite the gathering queue - my greediness is crystalised in front of me.
The goat is fabulous, cooked long and slow. It's spicy and warming.
The saltfish fritters, I could eat the entire tottering heap in the warming box on the counter, and then immediately ask for the recipe.
I don’t intend on eating it all, but, predictably, I do.
And then, I order some more to take home, because I want it for dinner too.
Not sure I’ve ever done that in any restaurant before, that I can recall.
So I end up leaving with a bag heaving with stewed oxtail and beans, the jerk chicken and the pepper steak, along with a couple more of those saltfish fritters, and a bag of dumplings.
Oh, and some fried chicken wings too, because it would be rude not to.
I ask about hot sauce (I’d scarfed all the curry goat, and felt a pang of regret that I hadn’t slathered it with anything fearsome), and an ominous blender filled with a deep red slurry of blitzed scotch bonnets emerges from the kitchen at the back.
“Be careful with it,” Flo says. I promise I will be.
Each and every dish is just what you want it to be. The oxtail and beans is like a hug, the sauce slightly sharp and hot with peppers, and the bones demanding to be picked up and sucked dry. The jerk chicken, cooked over coals in a drum can before being submerged in gravy, is smoky and falling to pieces.
The dumplings are rib-stickers, sweet and crunchy on the outside, doughy and comforting in the middle.
And that hot sauce. It’s terrifying. Volcanic. To be treated with respect or potentially to enact revenge on your very worst enemy. Use it as you will.
As I leave, the queue is now snaking out of the door, and onto Buxton Road. Office workers, three large lads from British Gas who are fixing boilers, all sorts.
“Is it your first time, dear,” I hear Flo ask another new customer.
It was. But it won’t be their last. Nor will it be mine.
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