When Majid Novin bought the Metro Cafe, opposite Chorlton tram stop on Wilbraham Road, 10 years ago, he’d planned to serve just homemade Persian food, the food that he and his wife Zahra had grown up with. He knew nothing about running a cafe at the time.
He studied civil engineering at the University of Tehran, and when the UK economy tanked in 2008, it took his company in Oldham down with it. Suddenly, developers had no money to pay him anymore.
So when a friend offered him the chance to take on the Metro, he and Zahra, a Farsi interpreter who also studied at the University in Tehran, decided that perhaps a change was the right thing. It was a standard greasy spoon set up, but old and out of date.
