There is nowhere else like the Curry Mile in England. The 0.5-mile stretch of Wilmslow Road running through Rusholme, about a mile south of Manchester city centre, has been the heart of Manchester’s South Asian community since the 1960s. Today it contains somewhere between 60 and 80 restaurants, takeaways, sweet shops, juice bars and grocery stores serving food from across the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East — all within walking distance of each other, many open until 3am, and almost all offering extraordinary value.
What to Eat on the Curry Mile
The Curry Mile is predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi in its restaurant offering, with a strong strand of Indian, Afghan, Lebanese and Persian food running through it. The most reliable choice for a first visit is a Pakistani curry house — the lamb karahi and chicken tikka masala here are cooked by people who have been making them for decades, and the quality is remarkable for the price.
Lahori Karahi on Wilmslow Road is consistently cited by Manchester food writers as the best karahi in the city: slow-cooked, deeply spiced, served with freshly made bread. Queue expected at weekends.
Mughlee Restaurant specialises in Lahori street food — seekh kebabs, nihari, paya — in a canteen-style space that has been feeding Manchester’s Pakistani community since the early 1980s. Cheap, authentic, brilliant.
For sweets, the mithai shops along Wilmslow Road sell barfi, gulab jamun, jalebi and halwa in quantities designed for large families rather than individual visitors. Buy several; they travel well.
The Mile at Night
The Curry Mile on a Friday evening — particularly in summer — is one of Manchester’s great experiences. The restaurants are full, the neon signs are lit, families with pushchairs navigate past groups of students and office workers, and the smell of slow-cooked meat, spices and fresh bread fills the street. It is genuinely unlike anywhere else in the north of England.
Most restaurants stay open until 1am or 2am at weekends. Late-night juices from the fresh juice bars along Wilmslow Road are the traditional end to an evening.
Getting There
Rusholme is about a mile south of Manchester city centre. The 147 and 43 buses from Piccadilly Gardens take around 10 minutes and stop on Wilmslow Road. It’s also a straightforward 20-minute walk or a 10-minute cycle from the city centre via Oxford Road. There is some street parking but Friday and Saturday evenings make it unreliable.
For more Manchester food guides, visit the MCR food and drink section — with venue listings, event guides and neighbourhood eating tours.
