Bangkok Diners Club feels a bit as if it’s tucked down a humid Rattanakosin sidestreet in the Thai capital’s old town, rather than in a room above a pub 6,000 miles away in Ancoats, Manchester. Husband-and-wife team Ben and Bo Humphreys have brought their joint skills to the Edinburgh Castle, an elegantly restored 19th-century pub with an upstairs restaurant that in recent years has made quite a name for itself; before the Humphreys’ arrival, this same space was the lair of Winsome’s Shaun Moffat, where plaudits and gongs were in ready supply, but then Moffat got his hands on his own place and this upstairs room needed a pair of cool, capable hands to take over.
Look no further than Ben and Bo, who have a pedigree in forward-thinking Thai cuisine. Bo was born and raised in Thailand’s north-eastern Isaan region, before moving to Bangkok in her teens, while Ben has cooked at Manchester’s Thai fusion restaurant District and, before that, at Tattu, Rabbit in the Moon and Lucky Cat. After the closure of District in 2022, the couple spent three years eating their way across Thailand and the US, picking up inspiration for dishes in which authentic Thai flavours, and occasionally Bo’s family-favourite recipes, could merge with the Korean and Mexican barbecue flavours of Miami smokehouses. Here, heat, citrus, fresh turmeric, shrimp paste and all the complexities of Bangkok cuisine meet relatively sleepy, low-and-slow American barbecue.
Yes, many chefs in Bangkok do indeed cook over live fire, but the flames there are generally a little more lively than those permitted in this tiny kitchen of a wooden-floored pub in north-west England. And when Bangkok meets Manchester via Miami, you get the likes of pork jowl taco with a rich, smoky, burnt-tomato jaew, and southern Thai mutton gaeng khua that’s hot with black pepper and dried red chilli, and served with pickled celeriac and fresh roti.
Bangkok Diners Club claims to be new and innovative, as, let’s face it, every new restaurant does, but they actually have a valid point here. This small kitchen slinging out raw bass with silky calamansi nam jim and rice bran to a tiny collection of tables is a very long way away from the traditional timeworn Thai scene in the UK, where pad thais and green curries are dished up on a table featuring a golden statuette of Buddha from Dunelm. That said, the place is also a long way from that purposefully edgy UK-Thai cooking I’ve suffered at many a hip British Bangkok-led establishment, always with an English chef and where the dishes turn up as and when, with each one hotter, grittier, twiggier and less moreish than the last.
The Humphreys’ restaurant, on the other hand, is authentic, boundary-pushing, a little odd – and also makes perfect sense. Smoked mackerel with jet-black charred skin comes on a salad of fresh grapefruit and ginger, followed by a nam tok salad that’s heavy with thick slices of salt-aged beef and comes with bone marrow aïoli. Bo serves us, taking delight in the fact that I’ve brought my brother for his birthday and he’s ready to eat. She’s keen we try the battered pickled onion rings with curry salt and the grilled chicken skewers made heavenly with milk caramel.
Artichoke and golden beetroot massaman curry – heavy on the cardamom, cinnamon and star anise – is a highlight for me, and comes with decadently good chicken-fat rice, while the roast pork belly phat phet with rhubarb stir-fry is also a huge hit. We order steamed broccoli with funky, fermented yellow beans to hit our vitamin quota, and pick our way through a papaya salad made more meaningful by the addition of shrimp floss.
This is a cracking little progressive, family-run place that has hit the ground running and will no doubt soon be one of Manchester’s hottest dining tickets. It has a small menu that has totted up many air miles in its making, and a big, generous heart. That evening’s menu was the first to feature a Bangkok Diners Club dessert in the shape of an ice lolly-shaped mass of rice ice-cream with a Jackson Pollock-esque topping of zinging fruit sauces. Simple, fun and just enough to send us off out into Saturday night Manchester with a spring in our step and deep intentions to come back.
When so many far-afield cuisines collide, I don’t usually expect the middle ground to be some battered pickled onion rings, but this is Manchester, and that’s bizarrely, beautifully fitting.
Bangkok Diners Club The Edinburgh Castle, Blossom Street, Manchester M4, 0161-414 0004. Open lunch Fri & Sat, noon-3pm; dinner Tues-Sat, 5-9.30pm. From about £35 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service
