Paparazzi don’t tend to swarm to Levenshulme - no massive necessity, really - but back when Malanie Tillekeratne worked at Scott’s in Mayfair, she’d have to scrap her way through the scrum on a regular basis as she left work of an evening. Paps would gather at the upscale fish restaurant, where Malanie worked as a pastry chef, to catch a glimpse of some of the celebrities who would be sucking down oysters and champagne inside.
“You’d see Tom Hanks, everyone,” he says, chatting - she likes a chat - outside Isca, the natural wine shop and restaurant on Stockport Road where she and her husband Michael are hosting one of their regular supper clubs. “You’d come out and they’d be snapping and flashing, then they’d realise it was just a chef, and they’d just stop straight away!”
They call themselves The Little Sri Lankan. Malanie is little, and Sri Lankan, so it all makes a lot of sense. She was born in Colombo, and moved to the UK when she was four. She met Michael, also a classically-trained chef, through a dating website when she was studying hospitality management in Bournemouth. He saw she was a chef too, so they met up for a drink and have been together ever since.
