Moon Indian Restaurant

If we were to twist the allegory about optimism and pessimism – is the glass half empty or half full? – to speak in lunar terms, we could say with absolute certitude that Manchester’s Moon Indian Restaurant is full, maybe even full with a glass and a half (that’s 150% full) of full cream milk. Whether or not you’re lactose intolerant or suffer from monthly bouts of lunacy, if you love curry you’ll love this Withington staple, down on Wilmslow Road near the junctions with Davenport and Swinbourne. This place fills up fast, so be sure to book the Moon.

Moon Indian Restaurant is a modern, bright curry house whose notoriously long menu of Indian classics is difficult to eclipse. Laid end to end, the house specials alone would stretch from Manchester to Bolton, and for sure you’d be evicted from Moon’s respectable Wilmslow Road premises and thrown in the loony bin if you passed up a chance to try one of the chef’s recommendations. In particular, Moon’s mughlai and makhani make more than an impact on those taking their first steps out into Withington’s often desolate dining surface, and who are lucky enough to stumble across this monolith to South Asian delight.

There’s a lightness to Moon Indian Restaurant’s dishes that is not simply attributable to the fact that these classics of Indian cuisine were prepared in an environment boasting one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity. The technique is a highly guarded secret, but Manchester’s fans of curious curry are invited to try and prise the lid off Moon’s space programme spin-off karahi, if only they would commit to steering the nose cones of their Indian subcontinental balti missiles in the direction of Withington and Moon’s celestial restaurant.