{"id":165953,"date":"2025-06-07T21:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T21:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/165953\/"},"modified":"2025-06-07T21:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T21:18:12","slug":"top-food-critic-delivers-verdict-on-the-massive-stockport-pyramid-curry-buffet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/165953\/","title":{"rendered":"Top food critic delivers verdict on the massive Stockport Pyramid curry buffet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay Rayner admitted he had ‘sneered’ at the idea of buffets before visiting Royal NawaabStockport Pyramid, which is now the Royal Nawaab<\/p>\n

Top food critic Jay Rayner has given his verdict on the Royal Nawaab Stockport<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After writing for the Observer for 25 years, he recently moved to the Financial Times, and has dined in some of the finest restaurants in the country.<\/p>\n

And in his latest column for the broadsheet paper, published today (June 7), Rayner described his visit to Stockport’s newest and flashiest curry buffet.<\/p>\n

The gargantuan restaurant and events space opened its doors to much fanfare in April of this year. The pyramid itself, formerly occupied by the Co-Op bank, underwent an enormous renovation to the tune of some \u00a315 million, with an aesthetic Rayner describes as ‘classy cruise ship’.<\/p>\n

The M.E.N’s Adam Maidment visited the restaurant on its soft opening and praised the food and decor – even if the enormous scale and bustling crowd of diners was a little ‘chaotic’.<\/p>\n

The space now encompasses three banqueting suites accommodating over 1,000 people and a buffet restaurant with over 400 covers that Rayner said was full when he visited – he had to rely on a local connection to get him a table.<\/p>\n

\"YouOne of the curries sampled by our own Adam Maidment(Image: Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

Rayner wrote that he was immediately ‘clocked’ as a reviewer by the restaurant, after which the staff were especially assiduous: “It was a chorus of \u201cLet me bring you the lamb chops\u201d and \u201cYou must try our nihari\u201d and \u201cYou need three types of naan\u201d”.<\/p>\n

He, too, raised his eyebrows at the scale of the operation which ‘laughs in the face of the challenges facing hospitality’, writing: “There are, on any given day, more than 100 dishes; a parade of pakoras and tikkas, birianis, masalas and the rest – a startling array.<\/p>\n

But ultimately the critic heaped warm praise on the food. Setting out his stall as no big fan of buffets, he conceded: “That meagre word doesn’t do justice to the gargantuan offering here.”<\/p>\n

“Perfect, bursting mouthfuls” of pani puri as a starter ‘set the standard’ for the evening, Rayner wrote, describing them as “delicate lentil flour globes filled with nutty chaat alongside jugs of a tamarind-based dressing”.<\/p>\n

“Lamb chops, cut thin, have a decent smoky char. Deep-fried masala-marinated fish is especially good.<\/p>\n

“<\/p>\n

\"ThereThere are hundreds of different dishes to try(Image: Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

Then moving on from grilled items to the curries, he praised more familiar curry house favourites like the lamb nihari: “One of the great dark stews, heavy with green and black cardamom”.<\/p>\n

But he also praised the variety of the dishes on offer. “What\u2019s striking is that, while there are crowd-pleasers, the kormas and tikka masalas with broad appeal, it\u2019s not all obvious,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

“Lamb paya, a new dish to me, brings lamb trotters, cooked low and slow until chewy and lightly gelatinous, and served in an intensely restorative soup-like broth.<\/p>\n

“They also have haleem, an extraordinary concoction of lamb in lentils flavoured with ginger, green chillies and lemon, cooked down for so long that it has turned into a paste-like soup.<\/p>\n

“With this we have blistered Peshawari naan, the almond and pistachio filling dyed a disconcerting pink, alongside still-warm garlic and kulcha naan, crusted with sesame seeds.”<\/p>\n

Food critic Jay Rayner(Image: Vincent Cole – Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

Rayner noted that there were some non-Asian items on offer as well, including chicken nuggets and lasagne. “But generally, the turnover of fried items is so fast they don’t get a chance to go soggy.”<\/p>\n

This was followed by a mouth-watering description of the desserts on offer: “deep-frying curls of cough-sweet-coloured jalebi” and “dinky globes of syrup-soaked gulab jamun, which are served still warm.”<\/p>\n

Concluding by describing it “a remarkable operation”, he wrote: I\u2019ve sneered at the idea of buffets in the past, called them the place where good taste goes to die, and many of them are.<\/p>\n

“But the Royal Nawaab is a classy rebuttal.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jay Rayner admitted he had ‘sneered’ at the idea of buffets before visiting Royal NawaabStockport Pyramid, which is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,786,4884,2465,1288,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-165953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-food-and-drink","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-manchester","13":"tag-stockport","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114644170346638945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}