Before the Curry Mile was the Curry Mile, there was Sanam, out there on its own, the only curry house in Rusholme. It was the trailblazer. It’s quite possible that without it, we would not have the Curry Mile at all.
Abdul Akhtar, its owner, remembers his father building the restaurant we now sit in - he would have been barely a teenager at the time - fitting it out opulently with chandeliers and a mezzanine floor. People would come in just out of curiosity to look at it.
Smiling, he points across the room to where he recalls seeing the workmen lifting the huge steel beams into place just on their shoulders, teetering on ladders. Health and safety was less of an issue back then. “Can you imagine that?” he laughs. “Going up a ladder with this huge girder on your shoulders!”
