'I lost faith in humanity and found it again in the city centre takeaway with a famous queue'

Salt & Pepper became a legend in its own lunchtime. Literally. Anyone who works in town will remember the queues that would snake around the foodhall in the Arndale food market each and every day, whether it was a dreary Monday or a busy Saturday afternoon.

Such was its wild and unbridled success that eventually, it had to move. Sibling owners Chloe and Cash Tao, the youngest generation of their family to start a food business in Manchester, a dynasty stretching back 80 years, were not deterred.

Rather than have to pay up for a £91,000 extraction system in the market to cope with the demand for their takeaway boxes (the council said that they had become a ‘safety risk’ because they were ‘so successful’), they moved over the road late last year into their first bricks and mortar restaurant.

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Now set up in their new unit on Market Street, in the sight line of where it all started, the queues are still an issue. Last Saturday, it was nudging at the front doormat, and snaking the whole length of the new unit up to the tills and the kitchen at the back, where the magic happens.

It’s the kind of deflating queue that you see and think ‘gah, is it worth it?’. Let me tell you now, it is.

At its busiest, the seating situation is an issue. A victim of its own popularity once again, there’s just not enough of it. So while you’re queueing, it’s a Marty Feldman situation, one eye on your place in the queue, and another on who’s just sat down, who’s midway through their lunch and who’s picking at