Estate agents talk a lot about ‘kerb appeal’. It can make or break a sale. If the same thing applied to That’s Thai, it would have closed its doors long ago. They may not have opened in the first place.
This tiny café, next to an MOT garage, is tucked away at the bottom of Cheetham Hill Road, behind the all-night snooker place that you’ve seen a thousand times but never been to. On a good day with the right wind, the smell of sweet Thai basil and fish sauce must drift across to the exercise yards of Strangeways.
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On a dark Tuesday night, customers file in and file out like there’s a revolving door, and nearly all of them are called by first names. One, who clearly works in the theatre, is discussing her latest production, and another, who casually wanders in in what looks a bit like pyjamas, is asked if he’s having ‘the usual’. He replies that he is and sits and waits on a stool, scrolling through his phone like he’s sat in his front room.
Pride of place on the wall is a previous MEN article on the café from back in 2019, where its unprepossessing location was as much noted as its dazzling food. Behind the counter, woks clatter on the stoves, the air is thick with chilli and the phone rings incessantly, orders flying in from all across the city.
So, despite the unprecedented and well-documented pressures facing the catering trade right now, owner Wan Hewitt looks to be nailing it, though the prices have risen a bit since before the pandemic, by around £1.50 a dish. But the food is still every bit as dazzling, even at a necessarily inflated price.
While there are fancier (and I mean far, far fancier), more opulent Thai places in town, with golden buddha statues and whatnot, you’d struggle to call the food better than it is here, and nothing whatsoever would be under a tenner. Here, nothing’s over a tenner - and much of it considerably less.
It’s the kind of menu where you have to make a long list in your head first, and start paring it down, dish by dish, until you’ve got something resembling an acceptable amount of food, otherwise it involves lying about how you’ve ‘got people coming over’ when in fact it’s just you.
But on this occasion, the decision is made to eat in, perched on the shelves around the edge of the café, so there’s nowhere to hide the gluttony. A pad thai (£8) is, of course, the benchmark by which all other noodle dishes should be judged, and Wan’s is exemplary, a greasy (as it should be), intensely savoury tangle of impossible-to-stop-eating wonderfulness.
It all arrives in random order, but who cares. Thai tempura prawns (£5.50) are covered in a thick layer of sharp crumbs, and with a hot dipping sauce that I’d drink from a mug, given the chance. The wings too (£7.50), fried with chilli and garlic, are polished off in short order.
If the pad thai is the go-to noodle dish, the hot and sour tom yum (£8.50), loaded generously with king prawns, is the soup by which to judge all others. It’s hot, sour, savoury, sweet, salty and heavily perfumed with lemongrass.
It’s also like drinking lava, because when asked, I thought ‘sure, I want it spicy’, to show I’m a man of the world. Thai spicy and me spicy are two very different things, so the accompanying jasmine rice helped calm the scorch marks on my tongue and prevent an embarrassed trip to Salford Royal.
As did a soul-enriching Gaeng Massaman (£7.50), luxurious with coconut and potatoes, peanuts, chicken and crispy fried onions on top. There is nothing more soothing in the world than this homestyle curry.
Hidden gems are only hidden gems for so long, until word gets out. And while large scale restaurant operators pore over whether sites will work or not, with footfall, kerb appeal, spend per head per visit and all manner of other factors sloshing around in their decision making, only one thing really matters.
If the food is good, people will come. Even if it’s down a back street next door to an MOT garage, and eaten with the mild concern that the prison break siren could go off at any time. The food here is good. So very, very good.
That's Thai, 27a Park St, Cheetham Hill, Manchester M3 1EU
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