How About A Chicken Curry For Just 27p? - A Slice Of History The owner of the Azad Manzil on Barlow Moor Road, Chorlton, found an old menu while rooting around in his basement and discovered to his amazement that chicken curry was listed at just 27p in today's money. He said: "I couldn't believe it when I found it. It's a piece of south Manchester curry history. It's been down that cellar for over 40 years and I just stumbled upon it. "Looking back at the prices then, it's amazing how times have changed - you could have a feast for 40p." Babu's restaurant is the oldest in south Manchester and, when it was opened by his father Azad Meah in 1964, a chicken curry cost five shillings and six pence (5/6) - equivalent to 27 pence in today's money. A Madras meat curry was just five shillings (5/0), or 25p. On an early wine list the restaurant offers a bottle of Moet champagne for £3.16 - it's now £38. On the 1970s' menu everything came with boiled rice or chips and a Rogan Josh, which costs £7.50 nowadays, was just 71p. Chicken curry was 66p - with rice or chips included. The most expensive curry was a margi mosola for £1.32, which served four people. The equivalent dish in today's restaurant, a Kulchi chicken, costs a whopping £75. For the more adventurous foodies of the early 70s, a spicy vindaloo cost them just 72p. Today the famous hot dish costs £7.50 at the Azad Manzil. Another interesting entry on the main menu is the T-bone steak, which came, of course, with boiled rice or chips. It cost 96p - compared with £13.50 today. A portion of rice back then was 5p and you could get extra rice or chips for 10p. The mega-cheap curries were washed down with draught Carlsberg for 15p or the house red at £1.04. On the 1968 menu, where prices were shown in shillings and pence, you could get a Madras meat curry for five shillings (5/0), or 25p, and a meat curry with rice or chips was 4/6. A tea cost nine old pence (9d) and a coffee one shilling - five pence in today's money. Spending 15/6 (77-and-a-half pence) on the restaurant's most expensive dish, the Azad Manzil Special Chicken Curry, was considered extravagant. Although curries were much cheaper 36 years ago, they would have been almost unrecognisable from the spicy dishes on today's menu. Babu explained: "In those days you just couldn't buy the spices. In this country now you can buy everything all year round, but back then it was seasonal. You could only get coriander, for example, in the summer." The Manzal curries were the cheapest in Manchester - but they almost never materialised at all. Before the very first sitting, Babu's father Mr Meah didn't have enough tomatoes for his sauces and had to go cap-in-hand to a chef at a nearby greasy-spoon cafe. Babu was 17 when the restaurant opened and helped his father out by dishing out poppadoms, clearing tables and working behind the bar. He said: "The chef at the cafe gave dad a few pounds to buy the last of the tomatoes he needed, otherwise he would have had to cancel the first sitting." Mr Meah, one of Manchester's curry pioneers, came to England from Bandladesh in the late fifties. He moved from Oxford to Manchester in 1963 and paid £46 for the lease on a former clothes shops on Barlow Moor Road. A Pakistani handyman did the conversion work for just £200 on the condition that Mr Meah - whose command of English was way above average for a newly-arrived immigrant - helped him learn the lingua franca. It meant Mr Meah had realised his dream for a snip at £246. Babu said: "Dad found it hard at first, especially as people were coming into the restaurant and having drunken fights. In those days, there were no more than half-a-dozen Indian restaurants in the whole of Manchester and the culture was to go out, get drunk, and take the piss out of the 'Pakis', as they called us. "Back then it was so difficult to get people to like the taste. Curry and chips were the biggest seller - I remember the kitchen staff filling bags of chips because the English weren't into their rice then." Babu added: "Selling curry en masse wasn't possible in those days. English society didn't accept it; there was a lot of racism. "Nowadays it's easy to get insurance from the banks or insurance companies, but my father would have had no chance. He was lucky to have so many regular customers who treated us nice and have been coming here from day one. "Their children and grandchildren eat here too - it's a family thing. So many of the older ones have passed away now and it's getting to the stage where I worry if they haven't been in the restaurant for a few weeks." (South Manchester Reporter) top