For 40 years, Rice and Three has fuelled Manchester

By Ophira Gottlieb

Yadgar has two ‘OPEN’ signs – one is in the door and one is in the window, and neither are particularly convincing. The lights inside the Northern Quarter cafe, though technically on, seem to shine with an unusually off quality. The front-of-shop decor consists of a single orange traffic cone held upright by a few strips of duct tape, and next to that is a small table sporting a can of Rubicon Mango that is permanently overflowing with cigarette butts and rainwater. If you venture so far as to actually try the door, you will find that it sticks on the tiles and lets out an abysmal screech as you push it, but persevere, because once you are inside you will find something worth the damage to your ear drums – the uniquely Mancunian Rice and Three.

Ask any Mancunian their thoughts on the supposedly famous canteens, and they’ll either bang on about their favourite one for the better half of an hour, or have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and shrug indifferently when you explain. For those of you that fall into the latter camp, the term ‘Rice and Three’ refers to a specific kind of South Asian restaurant that is based on the ‘Thali’ style of cuisine, and can be found solely and ubiquitously in Manchester, predominantly in the Northern Quarter.

Thali, which literally means ‘large plate’ in Hindi, refers unsurprisingly to food served on a large and often gold or silver plate, and consists of a portion of rice and usually some nan in the middle, with various small bowls of curries, yoghurts, and daals around them. The concept of the Rice and Three is somewhat simpler, less glamorous, and more English. You enter, point at the various metal containers of curry, and receive a portion of rice topped with your three selected dishes, all slopped with a ladle in dinner-lady fashion onto your normal sized, non-gold plate. Like with Thali, the available dishes vary daily, and normally cost you somewhere between six and eight quid.

But while their existence may be well known and widely revered, the history of the Rice and Three is more obscure. It is generally accepted that Rice and Threes were invented by the proprietors of This & That — a canteen hidden on a dingy Northern Quarter side alley that is somewhat inappropriately named Soap Street. This & That opened back in 1984 and is therefore soon to be celebrating its fortieth anniversary, which is no small feat for an unglamorous business in an area dominated by an ever-evolving line up of themed cocktail bars and teenie tiny burger joints (the burgers are small, not the joints).

This & That was created in order to feed the South Asian communities of Manchester, as well as the hardened English, who at the time would have been largely unfamiliar with South Asian food. They would point at the dishes, say ‘I’ll have some of this, some of that’, and thereby the Rice and Three was born, or so the story goes.

But to completely understand why Rice and Threes were created and flourished in Manchester and only Manchester, it’s crucial to look further back than the opening of This & That, to after World War II, when the cotton industry was in rapid decline. This decline of the industry saw unseemly changes to working conditions, such as the introduction of 24 hour-long shifts, and this meant that jobs in the mills and warehouses were considered highly desirable. As a result, labour was commonly outsourced, and by the 1960s Manchester’s textile warehouses were attracting a large number of migrant workers, most commonly Pakistani, Kashmiri, and Bangladeshi men. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, these men began to be joined by their families, resulting in multiple, thriving South Asian communities in and around the city.

It was at this point that restaurants serving South Asian food began to pop up all over the Northern Quarter, which at the time was still clinging to its name as an industrial hub, brimming with warehouses and their workers. This marked a turning point for South Asian Mancunians, as they began to be self-employed and employ each other, rather than working solely for white, English mill and warehouse owners. These restaurants typically took the form of canteens, in which convenience and speed of service was paramount. The warehouse employees were on their brief lunch break, and so food was often pre-cooked, served instantly, and eaten fast. 

If you walk into This & That tomorrow you will find a restaurant designed for precisely these purposes. Though the interior underwent a moderate revamp eight years ago, the decor still consists of long tables, equally long benches, premade food in large metal tubs and, more often than not, a queue for the latter. The most notable changes are the addition of some Factory (with a capital F) style caution tape, a non-committal mural of both the Man City and United emblems, and a number of statements painted onto the wall that are all highly symptomatic of a once well-kept secret that was long ago let out of the bag, including one behind the service station baring the words “Welcome to Manchester’s Hidden Gem”. Other than these minor flourishes, and an increase in price that seems fairly concurrent with inflation, the canteen is by all accounts the same as it was back in the 1980s.

Having been to This & That more times than I care to confess, I decide on this occasion to take my business elsewhere. I am pleased to discover that while This & That’s Soap Street may well be nominally inaccurate, the street that Cafe Marhaba is on – Back Piccadilly – has absolutely got it right. I step inside and am immediately confronted with the same awkwardness that I always find in Yadgar, or in This & That on an uncharacteristically empty Monday afternoon. None of these cafes ever play any music, and in the absence of chatter each of their dining areas are perpetually overwhelmed by the absurdly loud hum of the catering fridge. Here, in Marhaba, the chatter has stopped because the only table of customers – four men in jeans and puffer jackets – have all turned to look at me in fairly unwarranted confusion as I walk in. After a moment or so of discussion between them, they decide to clear the table next to theirs for me to sit down.

I order a can of Rubicon, shaking off the image of Yadgar’s makeshift ashtray, and inform the group that I am a journalist and would therefore like to ask them a number of over-familiar questions. There is a bit of a language barrier between us because their English isn’t fluent, and also because my comprehension of all seventy-odd of the mother-tongues of Pakistan leaves more than a little to be desired. One of them hands me his phone. I’m not sure what he wants. I google ‘The Manchester Mill’ and show them the Substack page. “We’ll see ourselves on this website?” the man with the phone asks, and I say “Sure, if you want to.”

The most forthcoming of the group, or perhaps just the best-angled to speak to me, is Shahroz. He tells me that the four of them moved to England from Pakistan and Punjab, and that he has travelled to the city centre all the way from Preston, while the other three – Rizwan, Sufian, and Danyal – live in Ashton-Under-Lyne, Longsight, and Newton Heath. They have all come here, to Cafe Marhaba, because they have just finished their classes for the day — all four of them are on the same course, studying for their MSC in Management.

I ask the group how they found out about the cafe, and Rizwan tells me that they had simply looked up Halal places to eat near their college on Oxford Road, which strikes me as strange considering the proximity of Rushholme and the Curry Mile. But Cafe Marhaba, unlike most of the businesses on the Curry Mile, is Pakistani owned, and I imagine that has something to do with it. Sufian tells me that they’ve been coming here for seven months, since their MSC began. I ask them if they’ve ever been to Yadgar, or This & That, but they haven’t heard of either. Have they ever heard of Rice and Three? They have no idea what I’m talking about, though there’s a sign bearing the words on the wall right across from them.

It quickly becomes clear that the habit of mythologising the canteens lies not with the regulars, but with the Rice and Three tourists. Shahroz and his friends are here because the cafe meets a need of theirs – that of affordable, halal, Pakistani food served quickly – and not because they perceive Cafe Marhaba to be ‘legendary’, or a ‘hidden gem’. The canteens still serve the same role as they always have, and this seems to be a significant feature of their success story. While the South Asian communities in Manchester have evolved massively, they continue not only to exist, but to grow, and the cafes that serve them seem to resist complete commodification because of their continued necessity. I ask the group what they recommend to eat. Kebab, insists Danyal. Potato Keema. Anything with lamb.

At the counter I am served by Abdul, whose recommendations are just as lamb orientated. So I choose my three dishes – lamb jalfrezi, potato keema, and chickpea – and Abdul ladles them onto a plate of white rice and sprinkles the whole thing with coriander. There seem to be a few unspoken rules within the Manchester Rice and Three circle. The portions should always be massive. The dish should always be sprinkled with coriander, or coriander should be readily available for self-sprinkling. The food should never be spicy enough to cause white people discomfort, but always just spicy enough so that your nose starts running while you're eating it. My Rice and Three in Cafe Marhaba checks all the boxes. I eat until I can’t anymore, finishing all the toppings, and leaving behind a clean bed of leftover rice.

When I chat to Abdul, he tells me a very different story than that of the customers about Marhaba’s success. He is working with his father today, Nazir Ahmed, who founded Cafe Marhaba when Abdul was still a teenager in 1992. Abdul grew up in Manchester, lives in Levenshulme, and has been around to see all the changes that the cafe and its surrounding community have undergone.

“Back when we first opened, we were serving the Rag Trade,” Abdul tells me. “The wholesalers, the factory workers round here.” And nowadays? “Nowadays it’s office workers, and people in apartments.” He lingers on the word. I assume he’s referring to the many mills in the area that have been converted into luxury flats.

We talk for a while about how the business has adapted in order to keep up with the changing clientele. The first thing that Abdul mentions is that they had to get a card reader, which immediately brings to mind the times I’ve spent enjoying lunch in Yadgar with the place completely empty apart from me, the owner, and the loudly humming fridge. “We don’t take card” is usually the owner of Yadgar’s opening gambit, and then to further the point he gestures to a sign by the till that reads “Plastic? Sorry, we don’t take it.” and then he goes outside to smoke into his Rubicon can. “Cash is on the way out anyway,” says Abdul, back at Marhaba. “To not meet those changes is a bit foolish.” 

The outbreak of Covid sped up the process of cash-aversion, and caused a number of other significant changes to the business. Marhaba began to offer delivery, through outsourced companies such as Just Eat and Deliveroo. But despite the adaptations, the cafe still took a hit. “It’s not the same after Covid. It’s busy, but it’s not social.”

I ask Abdul, perhaps naively, if he has seen a shift in his customers from a more South Asian to a more white community – bearing in mind that the only customers I’ve seen in my time here have been Pakistani, and seemed relatively taken aback when I came in. “When the wholesalers were around, it was 90 % Asians,” he answers. “It’s a mix now. 80-20”. “20% white?” I ask. “No,” he laughs. “20% Pakistani.”

Finally, we get round to discussing the subject of the Rice and Three. Abdul says that Cafe Marhaba started doing Rice and Threes “to keep up with the trend. Northern Quarter is renowned for the Rice and Three. Customers come for that.” It is by this point apparent that he’s referring to 80% of the customers, considering that the group earlier had never even heard of the concept. Abdul confirms that, as far as he is aware, This & That were the inventors of the Rice and Three. “I’ve never been there, though. Rivalry. They want you to stay away, or at least you get that impression.” I proceed to provide him with a great deal of insider intel on the inner workings of This & That, gathered from the silly number of times I’ve eaten there. I tell him about the long benches, the equally long tables, the canteen tins, and I tell him about the queue. Abdul looks around at Cafe Marhaba, now completely empty except for me. “We’re the only ones who do it on pilau rice, though.”