I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that Takoyaki Master, a new, bright sunshine yellow stand in the Arndale Food Market, is serving the best takoyaki in town. OK, it might be the only takoyaki in town, currently. But even if it wasn’t, it would still probably be the best.
Argue with that logic all you like, I’m not budging on it. Takoyaki originally comes from Osaka, and emerged in the middle of the 1930s as a street food snack, sold by vendors brandishing pans dented with hemispherical moulds, into which you pour batter and then diced octopus. They’re then nudged around with a chopstick until you create a delicate round ball of crispy-chewy deliciousness.
The result sits somewhere between a pancake and a dumpling, and who in their right mind doesn’t like either or - in the vast majority of cases - both of those things passionately? According to Pong Ho, who owns Takoyaki Master with his wife Vivien, in Tokyo they prefer them crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, whereas in Osaka, they prefer a chewier final dumpling.
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Here in Manchester, Pong and Vivien are making them somewhere in the middle, and I could eat them all day long. Originally from Hong Kong, they recently arrived in Manchester not knowing anyone at all. Pong is a games designer by trade, and Vivien is a graphic designer and also used to work in the Apple Store.
Back home, they started a takoyaki stand much like this one (they prefer the Tokyo-style crispy takoyaki there, and it’s also called Takoyaki Master, but in Cantonese of course), and left it to Vivien’s brother to run, and mulling a move to either Taiwan or Manchester, they made the move to the Rainy City. We should be so thankful that they did.
I order their meal deal (£8.50), which involves six takoyaki, some fries and a drink, and, because of greed, the fried chicken bento too (which comes with a four takoyaki, some perfectly sticky rice, some steamed vegetables and a drink, also for £8.50).
Once released from the scorching hot pans, brought with them from Hong Kong, the takoyaki are then painted prettily with okonomiyaki sauce - not hugely dissimilar to our own HP sauce, with its sweet and sour hit - and some Japanese mayonnaise. They’re then garnished ridiculously generously with bonito flakes - see-through thin slivers of dried, smoked tuna. When they hit the hot takoyaki, they move around spookily, like the red fortune telling fish.
Perhaps they’re telling me I’ll be coming back. But you don’t need a fortune teller to know that, really. I’m warned that they’re hot, but having learned precisely nothing from decades of eating, I still enthusiastically burn myself on the first couple.
Burning myself on the first was a mistake, but the second too, after having been warned, is careless but also testament to these balls of joy being irresistible. I guarantee you will do the same. The octopus just melts, and you’ll be wiping up every scrap of the sauces with your fingers (the katsu-style chicken is really no slouch either).
They’re best eaten straight away, and if possible looking out of the huge windows of the Arndale Food Market onto the chaotic High Street as the city files or staggers past. A man lights a huge joint as a new graduate wearing a flowing gown and full mortarboard get-up heads in the other direction.
The view is certainly offering up Pong and Vivien a crash course in what Manchester is all about, like a giant, hyperreal plasma screen showing a constantly baffling soap opera unfolding in front of them. I hope they keep tuning in.
Takoyaki Master, Arndale Food Market, High St, Manchester M4 3AQ
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