Manchester's first Street Food & Dessert
drive‑thru

What we cook

Street food, then dessert

The menu runs from proper Lahori street food through to the sort of desserts people photograph before they eat them. None of it is complicated. All of it is cooked when you order it.

The street food is where most people start. Gol gappe come with our own imli paani, made in house because the bottled stuff tastes like vinegar. Chaat bombs are the same crisp shells loaded with chickpeas, sweet yoghurt and pomegranate. If you want something you can eat one handed, the samosas are the answer. There is a lamb keema version as well as the veg one.

Then there is the fusion side. This is where our best seller lives. Dynamite chicken is the single most ordered thing on the menu: fried chicken bites in our own creamy dynamite sauce, finished with sesame seeds and spring onions. Chilli chicken, Korean BBQ and firecracker chicken come out of the same fryer into different sauces. The philly cheese steak is there if you want beef. They all upgrade to a meal with fries, egg fried rice or noodles.

Burgers and rolls are built around the bun kebab, which is the Lahore original and still the best thing on the menu for the money. The aanda wala burger wraps a chicken keema patty in an omelette. The Lahori smash is a flame grilled lamb patty with our own spicy mayo. Everything takes a double patty if you are hungry enough.

Then there is the sit down food, done for the car. Butter chicken with two rotis, paneer makhni for anyone off the meat and a chicken biryani layered with sella rice and served with a cucumber raita. The butter chicken comes standard or desi style if you want it to fight back a bit.

Loaded fries are exactly what they sound like. Chicken tikka, dynamite, philly or butter chicken, piled on and finished with melted cheese.

Desserts are a menu of their own. Matilda cakes four layers deep, warm brownie slabs, milk cakes soaked in cream, dessert cups, gulab jamun, gajar ka halwa, falooda and a fresh fruit range served with our own whippy. There is a gluten free range as well, so nobody has to sit and watch.

Open past midnight

Brownies at midnight

There is a particular kind of craving that only turns up after eleven. Not dinner, not a proper pudding, just something warm and chocolatey while you are sat in the car with the heater on.

Our brownie slabs come out warm and gooey with whipped cream and Mr Whippy on top. Kinder Bueno, cookies and cream, kunafa, strawberry and Nutella, or the Brookie if you cannot choose between a brownie and a cookie. They are loaded when you order them rather than cut from a tray that has been sat there since seven, which is the difference you can taste at half one in the morning.

If you want something bigger, the Matilda cake is four layers of chocolate sponge with ganache. The LL Crunch range layers brownie or cake with feuilletine and Belgian chocolate sauce. The Dubai brownie puts warm brownie chunks with strawberries, kunafa and pistachio in a cup.

We serve all of it until 2:00am, seven nights a week. You never leave the car. Park where the attendant points you, hazards on and a server brings it out. That is the whole thing.

Plenty of our regulars only ever come after eleven and only ever order brownies. If that is you, you are in good company.

Why we built it

A lane, not a car park

Lahori Lane started with a simple annoyance. Manchester has brilliant desi food. It has karak chai cafes on nearly every high street now. What it did not have was anywhere you could get either of them without parking up, walking in and waiting your turn.

Drive-thrus in this country mean fast food. Burgers, fried chicken and coffee. Nobody had done it with the food we actually grew up eating, so we went and did it ourselves.

The cooking has not been simplified to fit the format. The samosas are folded by hand. The chutneys are ours. The chai is brewed and churned properly rather than poured out of a flask that has been sat there since eight o'clock. The only thing that changed is how it reaches you.

You will find us on Redgate Lane in M12, which puts us a few minutes from Longsight, Gorton, Ardwick and Levenshulme. The city centre is about ten minutes away. It is a working lane rather than a busy high street, so it is easy to get in and out of even on a Friday night. There is room to turn round and you are not blocking anybody while you wait.

We are a small independent place. There is no chain behind us and no call centre. If something is not right, the person you tell is the person who can do something about it, which is why there is a feedback page rather than a comment box nobody reads.