Last week, as Diwali fireworks sprouted up in the distance at the top of Cheetham Hill Road, I was heading into territories unknown. Indian, South and South East Asian and Middle Eastern food, yes. It’s everywhere across the city, choices brilliantly abundant. Afghani food, not so much.
A friend of a friend (possibly of a friend of that friend) who is Iranian had said that Choupan does exceptional Afghani food, and also some very good Iranian dishes too, and to be honest, that’s more than good enough a recommendation as far as I’m concerned.
There is some truly great Persian food to be had in Manchester, not least in some most unexpected of places, like the Metro Cafe in Chorlton, which serves homely but luxurious Iranian food in the auspices of a greasy spoon. If you haven’t been, you must.
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But some fun Afghani food facts before we get going. The national dish is a Kabuli (or Qabli) Pulaw. That’s usually consisting of a long, slow-cooked meat of some description with a pilaf of rice, lentils, fried raisins, carrots, cardamom and pistachios.
More in line with Indian food, that will likely be served with a naan, rather than the flat breads you might be more likely to get in the Middle East. It might also come with a yakhni, a long-simmered bone broth with vegetables.
They’re also all about the dumplings - mantu or aushak; mantu always with meat, and aushak only sometimes with meat. Whatever the case, that all sounds brilliant and I’m in.
There are tables full as we arrive, and it’s just a minor point, but it’s toasty warm, and it feels like a good sign. Perhaps the traditional rugs on the walls are the way to go in terms of insulation. They have the additional benefit of looking very handsome too, and the one next to our table has the entire region mapped out on it.
Behind us, a painfully cute baby girl in a high chair is tearing strips of a piece of naan and shoving them down delightedly. Again, this feels like a good sign. No fussy eaters here.
The menu is pleasingly short. No six-page compendium of every dish in the national lexicon like you’re at a state banquet, just a few starters and straight into the larger dishes. A basket of some of that naan arrives (£2.40), warm from the tandoor oven, bubbly, light and charred like the lightest pizza dough in the world. It might be the best in town.
There’s a yoghurt sauce that it comes with and a green hot sauce, which numbs the tongue almost instantly. Caution is strongly advised, and the very nice man who serves it up reckons this is a pretty pedestrian batch. Sometimes it’s terrifying, whereas today, it’s just merely frightening.
It’s made with blitzed green chillies, coriander and vinegar, and after the initial shock, it gets spooned onto every course, the first of which is a plate of crisp fried aubergines with tomatoes, lentils and yoghurt, called bourani. It’s fantastic, and a snip at £4.
Thinking it would be foolish not to order the dumplings (£12.50), spelled ‘mantoo’ here, they arrive next. They’re steamed, homemade chewy parcels filled with spiced minced lamb and onion, and then covered unceremoniously in tomato and yoghurt, and what do you know, they’re perfect too. With the bread, that’s three for three.
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There are traditional koubideh skewers kebabs here, as well as skewered lamb fillets, and chicken, but it’s the stews that draw you in. There’s a lamb shank qabli polo, and a ghormeh sabzi - diced lamb with kidney beans and herbs, both of which are served at the Metro in Chorlton, and are heading towards the border with Iran in terms of origin.
So it’s the khoresht-e-gheimeh (lamb with dried lime stew, £11.50) and zereshk polo (chicken with barberries, also £11.50) which get ordered. The place has filled up now, and there’s only one spare table left, which for a Tuesday night is a fine result given the current plight facing restaurants all over the city.
The lamb stew arrives in a clay pot with a lid, and perfect rice, crisped on the bottom of the pan - tahdig, it’s called, which means, as you might expect, ‘bottom of the pan’ in Persian - and stained yellow with saffron. Laying on top of the lamb stew under the lid are waxy french fries. It’s lamb and chips, the sauce sharp but mellow with dried lime and it’s marvellous.
In the zereshk polo, the bright red barberries in the rice look beautiful and drop in sharp pops like dried pomegranate, while the chicken melts. In fact, we’re not even offered knives. They would be surplus to requirements.
Not least is the food faultless, but with no alcohol on the menu to bump things up, you’d probably struggle to spend £30 between two people. We went overboard with the dumplings, and while I’d totally do exactly the same thing again, Choupan is as wonderfully generous as it is welcoming. Please go.
Choupan, 414 Cheetham Hill Rd, Cheetham Hill, Manchester M8 9LE
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