CHICKEN BIRYANI 1972
It’s 1972, I am 24. It is a bit of a walk from the Architecture School, but along with almost every other student in Manchester we occasionally treated ourselves to a ’A Plaza’. There was only one meal students ate in the Plaza, incredibly cheap and incredibly filling chicken biryani, with five grades of chilli sauce. It was anonymous, decrepit, and in a row of similar down at heel shops on a Manchester main radial road, surrounded by demolition and redevelopment sites. It was a rough area. A net curtain across the shop window concealed the interior from the street. Inside were five or six Formica topped tables, each with four tubular steel chairs down the sides and one on the end, worn lino on the floor, painted cream hardboard faced serving hatch, naked hanging tungsten bulb lighting; it was extremely basic.
A surly owner in a grubby white apron thrust a limited cyclostyled menu into your hand, his nationality was indeterminate – it might have been Turkish. Students more regular than us, who went two or three times a week, were on first name terms with him, but I never knew his name – it was a family business and I think his wife and relatives helped. No student needed the menu, the best value was ‘a half chicken biryani’ – no one could have eaten all of a whole one, half was a struggle; the advantage of a biryani was that it came with integral rice, you didn’t have to order rice separately. My impression is that it was served on shiny battered metal plates. You had a choice of sauce – mild; standard; hot; super hot; fierce and suicide (these may not be strictly accurate, but you get the idea – ‘suicide’ was definitely the hottest), they came as a greasy red liquid in a metal saucer, which you swirled and tipped on top of the biryani. Foolhardy drunks would hazard the ‘super hot’, only madmen would try the ‘fierce’, as for ‘suicide’, it speaks for itself! Boys being boys, sometimes there would be competitions as to how hot you could go. The cost was incredibly cheap. I think one drank jugs of tap water, or possibly ‘Sol’ with a segment of a lime jammed in the neck.
Any rowdiness, arguments over the bill, or an attempt to leave without paying were met by the chef emerging from the kitchen with a cleaver to back up the owner – perhaps he was his brother. God knows how they passed a public health examination, one never enquired about the kitchen, it was best not thought about – there were rumours about Alsatians, but that was probably just student imagination. The place was always packed.
Just occasionally regular members of the public would wander in, having braved the rather unprepossessing exterior – they stood out like sore thumbs from the regular student clientele. I remember a cautious middle aged couple entering, sizing up the atmosphere, and awkwardly occupying a table looking most uncomfortable. Perusing the menu, the man eventually ordered TWO full chicken biryanis – we looked at each other with meaningful glances. On another occasion six of us were having a muted discussion about how many biryanis we could afford between us – and settled on two, When they came there were three – six halves. “No, no”, we exclaimed, “we only ordered two”. The owner indicated a lone bloke sitting at a table on the other side of the room “He’s bought the other” he said. An extraordinary act of generosity – I have remembered it for the whole of my life; a complete stranger buying hungry students an extra meal. I intend to replicate it myself, and am always hoping for a suitable occasion – one hasn’t turned up yet but hopefully it will. We sent the extraordinarily beautiful (but now dead) Judy Rashbrook over to thank him.
All things must pass – when I went back forty years later there had been so much redevelopment I had difficulty finding it, but eventually recognised the range of shops amongst the glittering offices – the Plaza was long gone, and in it’s place was a modern luxury Indian restaurant occupying two shop widths. I did not go in.
THE HATCH 1972
It’s 1972, I am 24. I very rarely had a meal out in Stratford upon Avon, most of the town was devoted to servicing the tourists, with tourist prices. I was on a grant, which for me had to cover the holidays as well as term time at Manchester (I was never sure if it was meant to cover the holidays as well, it wasn’t clear). But always in towns there are, tucked away from the main areas where the rents are cheaper, establishments catering to the trades servicing the resident population – builders, plumbers, electricians, delivery men – working men’s cafes, at working men’s prices. Generally they would be nearing the end of their lease, and so would be slightly incongruous amongst the smarter shops surrounding them. Those seeking a cheap meal know to look out for them – they generally have a Coca Cola sponsored shopfront and are run buy first generation immigrant Italian, Spanish or Cypriot families who came here after the war. The offering is invariably any permutation of fried chips or mash, egg, bacon, sausage, cabbage, liver, rice, spaghetti, bolognese and meat pies, with apple pie and custard or ice cream; there might be a ‘Special’ of the day. No women frequented such establishments, except perhaps prostitutes, they didn’t like the cooking or the atmosphere.
‘The Hatch’ was one such, on the fringe of the main shopping area – I don’t think it featured an especially obvious ‘hatch’, but the name gave the general idea. So if I needed a meal when in Stratford, that was where I went. There was a counter, with a large board behind listing the food and prices – one ordered ones meal at the counter and paid, sat at a table, and a young waitress brought it, probably one of the daughters of the house. A cup of tea was universal (it was once explained to me that the food was generally at cost price, the profit was in the hot drinks). There was generally not much pressure to leave, there was no ‘service charge’ and when one left no tip was mandatory.
The cheapest meal was one fried egg and chips, which is what I had, every time. This time was no different, the place was moderately crowded but I found an empty table. The clientele was no different from what one expected – working men and the odd working class youth. My meal arrived, In front of me on the table, as in all such establishments, were tomato ketchup in a red squeezy plastic tomato; brown tangy sauce in a brown squeezy plastic bottle (both probably watered down), and salt and vinegar or ‘non brewed condiment’ in cut glass bulbous bottles with screw on white plastic nozzles. I wished to put salt and vinegar on my chips so I picked up the salt and tipped the nozzle downwards over the chips. It fell off onto the chips, followed by the whole contents of the recently re-
And then I glanced up and noticed a pair of youths at a far table looking in my direction grinning broadly and nudging each other. It dawned on me that they had loosened the top for a bit of entertainment. Perhaps I should have gone over and explained because of their stupid trick I now had to go hungry, but I did just walk out feeling sick. To this day I hold the caps on things I am upending.
EVE WITHOUT ADAM 1972
I’ts 1972, I am 24. Very similar to the student and working men’s cafe was the teenager’s cafe, but these invariably had a jukebox. By the time I frequented such places the Teddy Boys (and girls) were gone, displaced by skiffle and frothy white coffee from a gurgling Gaggia machine in transparent ‘Pyrex’ glass cups and saucers (inexplicably called ‘espresso’). Often they were in basements like ‘Pargeter’s Pit’ in Stratford upon Avon.
I took a summer holiday job for six weeks in the Portsmouth City Council’s Architect’s Department. The Civic Centre had just been re-
Looking at Google Earth I see the office block is on the roundabout and the housing down the side road.
Anyway, I was lodging with Owen in Southsea, home of Canoe Lake and the Wild Mouse, and at the end of the road was Eve’s Cafe (the name is still burned in my memory), with a jukebox. The thing about jukeboxes is that they prioritise the most played records, so eventually each uniquely represents the tastes of the clientele. This one offered at the top of the list ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ by Lou Reed about a naive boy moving to the big city, obviously something I could relate to (but not ‘he became a she’!). The other customers were all my age and both sexes, eking out a frothy coffee for as long as possible, and playing Lou Reed obsessively.
Once, at the opposite table, was a gaggle of three girls engaged in a lively conversation. Normally I would have ignored them, I knew girls were not for me, but as my glance swept across them one of them turned and smiled directly at me. At me. Smiled. The first time a girl had ever smiled at me. I didn’t understand. I was so astounded I did nothing, and the moment passed. And all the time Lou Reed played -
I am even now unsure what was going on, cynically I suppose she may have been a prostitute.