Cocotoo, Sistine Chapel of Manchester

Friday, March 14th, 2008

Have you ever slept under the railway arches?  It’s not typically a pleasant place.  Certainly not a place you would choose to sleep.  But if it’s raining and you have no fixed abode, well, everything is relative.

I nodded off under the arches near Oxford Road station on Whitworth Street in Manchester.  Thankfully, someone had been thoughtful enough to build an Italian restaurant around me that was warm and welcoming (not that I would have noticed given the amount of alcohol canoeing through my veins).

Manchester by night - Cocotoo

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Aakash, “largest Indian resto in the world”

Friday, February 29th, 2008

Does size matter?  The dreaded question that haunts 90% of men (but never seems to concern the fairer sex), obviously played on the mind of Mohammad Iqbal Tabassum in 2001 when he bought a former Providence Congregational Church to turn it into an Indian restaurant.

The Aakash, which claims to be, and almost certainly is, the largest Indian restaurant in the world, occupying, as it does, a large parcel of land in Cleckheaton, a small town in West Yorkshire.

Aakash…bless you!

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